Fighting with Monsters
by Sisiutil
Summary: Star Wars: The Bergeron Chronicles, Part 2. Jedi apprentice Kilu Branon once again finds herself in over her head on a mission, and calls upon freighter pilot Axel Bergeron for help. COMPLETE.
1. Chapter 1

**Fighting with Monsters**

**Star Wars: The Bergeron Chronicles, Part 2**

_a fanfic by Sisiutil_

* * *

**Chapter 1**

"We have to get to the ship!"

_Easier said than done_, Kilu Branon thought in response to the Jedi Master's terse comment. They were pinned down by blaster fire coming from two directions. The two Jedi had taken shelter inside a doorway in Mos Eisley, a spaceport on Tatooine, an arid world in a binary star system in the galaxy's Outer Rim Territories. The hangar's entrance, a rusted metallic door set inside a whitewashed wall, was only a few meters away, across a wide, sand-strewn street from the doorway where the two Jedi now crouched. But it might as well have been in another star system, thanks to the incessant blaster fire blocking their path. Only the Jedi's formidable lightsabers held their numerous attackers at bay. Their long, dark brown robes and khaki clothing were stained with dust and sweat.

Kilu stole a glance at Habbad Nefeel, her Jedi Master. The Mon Calimari's large eyes were working independently on either side of his salmon-colored, dome-shaped head, gauging distances and probabilities. The Mon Calimari had, thanks to their participation in the Rebel Alliance, built a reputation throughout the galaxy as master tacticians and strategists; Kilu tried to take some comfort from that. She blinked sweat out of her brown eyes. She quickly reached up and brushed away a stray strand of her auburn hair that escaped from her pony-tail and swayed as an unwelcome distraction on the left side of her face.

"We go back to back," Nafeel said, "and deflect the blaster bolts with our lightsabers."

Kilu glanced out of the doorway at the numerous high-energy projectiles hissing and whining through the air. That was a lot of blaster bolts to fend off. To Jedi of the Old Republic, such a feat would have presented little challenge. But the new Jedi were few and far between, and were struggling to regain the mastery of the Force that their older, fallen brethren had enjoyed only a few generations before. Of their number, only Master Jedi Luke Skywalker exhibited the proficiency with the Force that had once been typical of their order. The irony that this decidedly unfriendly reception was occurring on his home planet wasn't lost on the young Jedi.

"Don't try to be fancy, Kilu," Nafeel said to her in a steady voice that inspired a small but valuable extra measure of confidence. "Don't try to deflect the bolts directly back at our adversaries. Just fend them off. Let the Force guide your hands."

"Yes, Master," she replied. She cast a brief glance of appreciation and admiration his way. "May the Force be with you," she said.

"And with you as well," Nafeel said with a nod of his head, and what Kilu had learned to recognize as his species' approximation of a smile on his wide, thin-lipped mouth. "Ready? GO!"

The two Jedi turned their backs to one another and side-stepped out into the street. It came as no surprise to them that the rate of blaster fire immediately increased. Their lightsabers hummed as they swung through the air, crackled as one blaster shot after another ricocheted off the bright blades. Kilu surrendered her actions to the Force; she could feel it flowing through her, into her muscles and tendons, so that her bright green lightsaber blade seemed as though it was moving of its own accord.

Their adversaries were numerous--well over a dozen, crouching behind speeders, surface transports, and inside doorways for cover, which bespoke some measure of wary respect for the Jedi, since they were all safely out of range of the lightsabers. But that respect wasn't enough to convince them to let up on their rate of blaster fire.

Kilu fought off the urge to steal a glance at the hangar entrance to see how far away it was. She just kept moving sideways and focused on letting the Force flow through her and guide her lightsaber. She could feel her Master's back pressed against her own, which told her he was also still managing to fend off the blaster fire, but other details began to vanish from her awareness as she experienced the focused tunnel vision typical of a Force-sensitive warrior in battle. The heat and light of the twin suns overhead diminished, as did the distant sounds of the city that surrounded them.

Suddenly, she heard a hiss from her right as the hangar door opened in response to Nafeel's Force-touch of the access panel. They'd made it! The two Jedi scrambled through the door and Nafeel shut it behind them. But they both stood watching the closed door, lightsabers at the ready, well aware that their attackers would shortly attempt to blast their way through it.

"Get to the ship," Nafeel said to her.

"You first, Master," she said. "You're more familiar with the shuttle's systems than I am," she reminded him. "You can get the pre-launch sequence engaged faster."

"Very well," Nafeel said, only a hint of reluctance in his voice as he gave in to her recommendation. "But I want you on board as soon as you hear the engines fire up."

"I'll be there," she promised, then turned her attention back to the sealed entranceway.

Already, Kilu could hear blaster shots rattling the aged metal door as their adversaries attempted to force their way into the hangar. She took a deep breath and used the unexpected moment of relative peace to recover her inner balance, as a Jedi should. The young Jedi forced herself to relax, to surrender to the Force, to let its energy and power flow through her and restore her equilibrium.

It was at that moment that she felt the subtle tremor in the Force. She'd never experienced a Force premonition before, so she almost didn't recognize it for what it was. But she suddenly felt a heightened sense of danger, greater even than what she'd just been experiencing during the battle. Her mind focused on it, attempted to localize it in time and space, until she narrowed in and identified it. The source of the danger was emanating from right behind her, and it was only seconds away from manifesting itself...

"Master, STOP!" she shouted, whirling to face the shuttle, and the words were barely out of her mouth before the ship exploded in a bright ball of flame.

Had she not experienced the premonition, she would not have survived. She instinctively threw up a Force bubble in front of herself to deflect the heat and shrapnel of the blast. Even so, the shockwave of the explosion threw her back against the hangar's inner wall, winding her and making her fall to the ground with all the grace of a thrown rag doll.

As she unsteadily pushed herself to a sitting position and looked at the ruined, burning remnants of the shuttle, a devastating sense of déjà vu washed over her. For the second time in her young life, she'd been betrayed somehow, ambushed while on a mission vital to the Jedi, and her Master who'd been leading the mission had been murdered before her very eyes. The fact that she had not only respected, but had come to admire and care about Habbad Nefeel very much, only made her feel worse. She took a tremulous breath as the desire to curl up in a fetal ball and cry her eyes out overwhelmed her.

But she was a Jedi, and there were over a dozen beings on the other side of rapidly-failing doorway that wanted to kill her. And in the inside pocket of her wrap-around tunic was a data chip containing information potentially vital to the Jedi, and one of their number had just given his life in the process of obtaining it. There was far more at stake here than her own feelings.

Kilu took a deep breath and allowed herself only a moment to acknowledge her grief and fear before setting them aside. She retrieved her deactivated lightsaber, which had fallen to the ground beside her when she'd dropped it upon hitting the wall. She then stood and looked across the hangar, past the wreckage of the shuttle, to the opposite wall of the roofless building. She reached out with the Force; the alley on the other side of the far wall was empty--an oversight she silently swore she would make sure her unknown enemies come to regret.

She ran towards the wall and when she drew near to it, she Force-jumped over it, landing deftly in the empty, sandy alley behind the hangar. Just as her feet made contact with the ground, she heard the muffled sound of the hangar door finally failing to blaster fire. Good, she thought--they might presume that she had also died in the blast. That might buy her some precious time.

Kilu pulled her long, dark brown cloak around her slender body and raised the cloak's hood over her head and face. She walked out of the alley into one of the spaceport city's streets, where several onlookers were curiously but cautiously looking towards where all the commotion had been taking place only a few moments before. Many of the world-weary denizens of the spaceport were returning to their business, and she forced herself to assume a casual pace so she appeared to be just another one of them.

Once she'd put a good kilometer or so of breathing room between herself and the hangar, she ducked into a dimly-lit cantina. She sat down in a small booth in the back once she'd surreptitiously ensured that she could see all the bar's entrances from that position. Kilu ordered a flask of the local poison from the waitress who approached her table; she wouldn't drink it, but it helped her appear to all intents and purposes like just another unremarkable visitor to the busy spaceport.

As she considered the direness of her situation, Kilu realized that all her Jedi meditation techniques were not going to keep her anxiety at bay. Beneath her cloak and loose Jedi clothing, her body was bathed in sweat, and it wasn't just because of the desert planet's hot, arid climate. She was now stranded--no, _hunted_--on a planet several thousand light-years from the nearest New Republic outpost. The Jedi were based even further away, on the distant planet of Yavin 4, and they were still too few in number to be able to assist in every crisis in the galaxy. Help from either the government or the Jedi, therefore, was several days away at least, and that was time she probably didn't have. Desperately, she tried to remember the nearest star systems and what, if any, assistance might be found in them.

Suddenly, she remembered that the Sessram system was only a few light-years away. That was where she had been the last time she'd found herself in a fix like this, just a few months ago. And that was where she'd unexpectedly found someone who'd helped her. No, she corrected herself, calling it "help" was selling him short. He'd saved her life, at great risk to his own.

Too bad they hadn't exactly parted on the best of terms.

She couldn't let what had happened at the end of that mission affect her judgement now. She had to trust that, whatever his feelings towards her, he'd still do the right thing, as he had the last time. Once again, he was her best hope--her only hope.

Off in one corner of the bar was a public commbox booth; the stylized icon of a star cluster indicated that it had sub-space transmission capabilities. It would be a risk communicating over an open channel, but it was a risk she would have to take.

As Kilu walked over to the commbox, a slight smile came to her lips. _Risk_, she thought. Axel, businessman that he was at heart, always went on about risk, especially about what he called "acceptable levels of risk" and the importance of operating within them. She supposed it was what made him a modestly successful small business operator. It didn't explain why he'd thrown caution to the wind when they'd first met, but she was well aware of the reason why he'd done that. She felt a pang of guilt as she realized she was about to take advantage of that reason once again, but pushed it away. She had no choice. She just hoped that he was still willing to take risks, huge ones, for her sake--which was a risk all of its own, of course.

She sat in the commbox. With a hum, its auditory disruption field activated around her, ensuring that the call would be private--at least inside the bar, anyway. She inserted her credit chip and then initiated a call to Axel Bergeron, captain of the space freighter _Nomad_. Her fingers were crossed, but Axel wouldn't be able to see that through the booth's small viewscreen.

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

**Fighting with Monsters**

**Star Wars: The Bergeron Chronicles, Part 2**

_a fanfic by Sisiutil_

* * *

**Chapter 2**

"So if I put off the maintenance of the ion drive for a month, and land that spice shipment in the meantime..."

Axel Bergeron muttered to himself as sat in the captain's chair aboard his ship, the YT-1300fp space freighter his father had named the _Nomad. _Axel had kept the name of the ship, just like he'd kept the name of the business, Bergeron and Son Shipping Ltd., even though his father had died nearly one standard year ago and even though Axel himself had no son, or any other family, for that matter. But he liked both names, so he'd kept them both. He would be the first to acknowledge that they gave a comforting illusion of stability in a galaxy where that was a precious commodity.

The ship was resting in a hangar in Carnaxa, the primary spaceport city on Axel's home planet of Sessram Prime. The freighter pilot busied himself with a task most beings in his profession and many others loathed: balancing his accounts. Axel looked upon it as a puzzle, like the hinged block he'd played with as a child, trying to get all the colors to match on each of the cube's six sides. The only problem with financial puzzles, though, was that the sides kept moving and the colors kept changing of their own accord. Axel kept telling himself he enjoyed the challenge, certain that if he persisted he'd one day believe it. Besides, it kept his mind off other things. Like a certain woman he as doing his damndest to forget.

A soft chime from the panel beside him indicated that he had an incoming sub-space comm call. He turned in his chair immediately; he'd been expecting a response from a potential client. He shifted himself over to the co-pilot's chair and activated the comm panel. He tapped in his acceptance of the call, looked at the display screen... and his entire body froze. It felt like someone had just kicked him in the gut.

"Kilu..." he whispered in response to the hazy but all-too-recognizable face on his comm panel's viewscreen, a face he'd memorized and had been seeing in his dreams for months now, in spite of those very earnest efforts to forget about her.

"Hello, Axel," Kilu Branon said, her brown eyes gazing directly into his across the many light-years that separated them.

He swallowed. "Long time, no see," he muttered.

"I know," she said, though if she felt at all abashed about calling him out of the blue like this, it didn't show. Didn't she know what effect seeing her again would have on him? Apparently not... or maybe she just didn't care. "Axel, I need your help."

_Of course you do_, he thought, _why else would you be calling? _He almost said it, but stopped himself. Not because he knew full well how bitter and petulant it would sound, but because a more salient fact had suddenly registered in his mind: Kilu was in trouble.

"What is it?" he asked, the pain he'd felt at seeing her again momentarily forgotten as his concern for her came to the fore. "What's the matter?"

"I'd rather not say over an _open channel_," she told him, her voice heavy with meaning.

It took him a moment, but he understood. The static and interference affecting both the audio and video quality told him that she was calling from one of those cheap public commboxes--another indication as to the level of her desperation.

"Right," Axel said. "So, are you going to come to me, or..."

"Why do you think I called you, flyboy?" she responded impatiently, one slender brow raised.

"Of course," he said. She didn't really need _him--_she needed his _ship_. Well, it was something.

He glanced at the other information on the viewscreen, which told him what her exact location was: Mos Eisley, the main spaceport city on Tatooine, in the closest binary star system to his own home base in the Sessram system. It was only a few relatively short light-years away. He forced himself to think quickly. How could he tell her where to meet over an open channel? He searched his mind; fortunately, he'd been to Mos Eisley several times on cargo hauls and was well-acquainted with the spaceport district.

"Okay," he said. "There's a place there, named after that recipe of my dad's you liked so much." He looked at her expectantly.

It only took her a very short moment to think that through, then she blinked and nodded in understanding. "Right," she said, "I'll find it. When will you be there?"

He thought for a moment again, realizing he had to find a way to answer that question cryptically as well. "In about... one eighth of your former fellow passenger's sleep cycle?"

"Got it," Kilu said. On the trip back from B'Tel Four, they'd taken the planet's Foreign Minister to Coruscant, the capital of the New Republic; his species had a sixteen-hour sleep cycle, so an eighth of that was two hours. "See you then." With that, she ended the transmission.

Axel sat staring at the blank viewscreen for several moments. Not a "thank you", not a "nice to see you again", not even a lousy smile to show she was looking forward to their reunion. Typical. She was Jedi and, as he'd learned the hard way, was all about the mission, whatever that mission might be. He shook his head to clear it; none of that mattered right now. Kilu was in trouble and needed his help. The question was, what kind of trouble, and how much help was she going to need?

Not that any of that mattered. Not when it came to Kilu, in spite of what had happened between them. His decision made, he returned to the pilot's seat and brought the control console to life. He started tapping in the pre-launch sequence.

"Arf!" he called out over one shoulder.

A moment later, his white-and-black striped, conical-headed agromech droid, R4-E6, appeared at the far end of the cockpit corridor.

"Get us ready for take-off," he said. Arf responded with a series of beeps and whistles; Axel listened to them and winced. "Aw hell," he cursed in reaction to Arf reminding him of the customer he was abandoning. "Send Wills a text message with my apologies and regrets--tell him my ship's been commandeered by the NR government for an emergency," he said. "That's not far from the truth..." he muttered after the droid warbled a reluctant acknowledgement.

A few minutes later he was blasting out of the planet's atmosphere, heading for Tatooine and the woman who'd broken his heart.

* * *


	3. Chapter 3

**Fighting with Monsters**

**Star Wars: The Bergeron Chronicles, Part 2**

_a fanfic by Sisiutil_

* * *

**Chapter 3**

Kilu Branon sat, as inconspicuously as she could, in a dark booth in the bar portion of Morty Corba's Karkan Ribene House and Bar. Not for the first time since she'd arrived, she frowned, grimaced, and rubbed the bridge of her nose with her index finger and thumb, trying to stave off the headache she felt coming on, one of the bad ones that formed right behind her eyes. She then pulled the dark hood of her robe further over her head, the better to cover her face. She even slumped down a little into the booth's bench, trying not to be noticed.

It wasn't working. For the fourth time since she'd arrived only five minutes before, the waiter--a tall, thin, blue-skinned creature with a single eye and a tiny tuft of silver hair atop his head--approached her, carrying a single drink on his tray.

"From the Twi'lek gentleman at the bar..." the waiter said, a little nervously this time as he began to set the drink down in front of her.

"I _told _you, I'm _not_ interested," Kilu growled at him through clenched teeth, casting only the most cursory of glances at the Twi'lek in question, a violet-skinned member of his species who smiled at her as he idly stroked the brain-tentacle which was wrapped around his neck.

"Come on, lady, I'm just doing my job," the waiter pleaded as he held the drink, a light blue frothy concoction decorated by a brightly-colored little umbrella, just above her table.

"You bring me one more drink from another 'gentleman at the bar'," Kilu snarled at him, "and I'll rip out your gizzard and use it as a swizzle stick!"

The waiter sighed and put the drink back on his tray. "What about, er, a drink sent by one of the ladies?" he ventured cautiously. "Because the female Togruta at the far end was asking about you..."

"Go. AWAY."

And the waiter did, though shaking his head and evidently wondering what this woman was doing in this place anyway, since she didn't want company.

Kilu was wondering the same thing herself. All around her, beings were engaged in various forms of negotiation, all in pairs--well, almost all--and all towards the same end, which the Jedi silently acknowledged would, at least, result in the perpetuation of the various species present. Though not in every case. At some tables sat two beings of the same species, at other tables were odd couples from different worlds--some so different that Kilu couldn't help wondering how the mechanics of their coupling could possibly work, though she abandoned that train of thought as quickly as she could force herself to do so. The Jedi valued knowledge, but in some rare cases it was simply better not to know certain things.

Her jaw clenched as she stared down at the tabletop in front of her. Of all the places to choose for a rendezvous, why in the stars had Axel chosen a pick-up joint? She couldn't help thinking that this was a perverse joke on his part, or some bizarre form of revenge, though he'd probably just protest that it was the best he could come up with on such short notice. Whenever he got there.

Kilu raised her eyes and glanced anxiously around the dimly-lit establishment once again. There was no sign of him still. She checked her chronometer. He was fifteen minutes late. She took a deep breath and tried to maintain her Jedi mental detachment and calm, but the surroundings didn't make that very easy.

The blue-skinned waiter was approaching her table again. She suppressed a powerful urge to activate her lightsaber.

"I thought I told you to..." she began to say.

"The, er, _chef_ would like to speak with you," the waiter said.

That brought Kilu up short. Beneath her dark hood, she frowned. "The chef?" Was this a trap of some type, she wondered?

"Yes," the waiter said, the single brow above his one eye furrowing in a puzzled expression that, in a bizarre way, reflected her own. "He said you'd be... uh... interested in his father's recipe for Karkan Ribenes?"

"I see," Kilu said, her lovely features lightening with understanding. "Yes, I would be interested in that. Which way to the kitchen?"

The waiter pointed to a swinging door a few meters away. Kilu nodded a thank you, rose from her table, and walked towards the door.

Once she went through it, the kitchen staff--about a dozen different creatures of various species--briefly raised their heads, eye stalks, and a few other appendages towards her, then collectively shrugged and went back to their assigned tasks. Kilu looked around. She spotted Axel standing by an exit at the back of the kitchen.

He was dressed in his usual clothing: a dark suede jacket over a white shirt, khaki pants tucked into black boots, all of which unselfconsciously showed off his trim form. His blaster was in its holster, strapped to his left thigh. He hadn't changed; his jet-black hair was still cut short and parted on the left, his face clean-shaven, his blue eyes as piercing as ever. Except there was now a pained, haunted look in his eyes, and instinctively, Kilu knew she was the reason it was there.

Kilu sighed with relief at the sight of him, but other than that, she showed no reaction--which took nearly all of her Jedi-trained self-control. Her first instinct was to run to him, throw herself into his arms, and gladly partake of the illusion of safety that such an action would provide. And she wanted to do more than that besides, things that would make many of the customers in the room she'd just left blush, or do whatever their respective species' version of that was.

But she'd closed that door several months ago. The life of a Jedi involved hard choices and sacrifices, and the code was clear: personal attachments were dangerous--they had the potential to lead to the dark side of the Force. So she walked towards Axel calmly, her face impassive, determined to keep their relationship professional--which, she knew only too well, was what she should have done from the start. Besides, she was a little annoyed with him.

"Nice place you chose for a rendezvous," she said as she walked up to him, her voice dripping sarcasm.

He shrugged. "It was the best I could come up with, under the circumstances."

"Uh-huh."

"What, did some Hutt sugar-daddy try to sweet-talk you onto his barge?" he asked, one brow cocked.

"Let's just get out of here," she said testily.

"Fine by me," Axel said as he pushed the restaurant's back door open and led the way out into an alley. The night air was surprisingly cool and crisp for a desert world, and a light breeze ruffled Axel's short black hair and made Kilu's auburn pony-tail flutter. "So what is it this time? Imperials? Smugglers? Ticked-off Ewoks?"

"We'll talk aboard your ship," Kilu replied. She began to impatiently march ahead of him, even though she didn't know which direction to go.

"Ah, yes, the _ship_," Axel remarked, and was unable to keep the resentment he felt from creeping into his voice. "It's the reason you called, isn't it? 'Oh no, I'm in trouble! I know, I'll call up that pathetic freighter pilot I boffed and sucker him into risking his neck for me again..."

Kilu turned on her heel to glare at him, her Jedi reserve at risk of completely vanishing. "That's impressive, Axel," she said sharply. "From zero to full pout in under sixty seconds. But if you don't mind, I've been _shot_ at today, so I'm not in the mood for your dramatics, all right?" She turned around and started walking again, but then stopped. "Which way do I go?" she demanded, waving one hand in an impatient gesture. She then took a deep breath and tried to recover the emotional equilibrium so vital to a Jedi.

"Straight ahead, second right," Axel said. His hurt tone had disappeared, replaced by concern. "You were shot at? By who?"

"I don't know," Kilu said, concern evident in her voice as well. "And for all I _do _know, they're still after me. Though maybe they think I died in the explosion..."

"Whoa!" Axel said, reaching out to grab her wrist and stop her. "There was an explosion? What exploded?"

"They blew up our shuttle," she said, staring evenly into his eyes at first, but then she dropped her gaze to the ground. "...and... killed my Master, Habbad Nefeel."

"You lost _another_ Master?" Axel said. "This is becoming a habit, babe." She raised her head to cast an angry, shocked glance at him. "I'm sorry," he said quickly, "that was callous of me." Kilu said nothing; she turned from him and started walking again. "Kilu, what's going on?" he asked.

"I told you, we'll talk aboard your..." she began to say, then stopped dead just as she was about to take the second right he'd mentioned, down an empty street that led to the spaceport's hangar blocks.

"What?" Axel asked, coming up behind her.

"We can't go this way," she said, her hand reaching for her lightsaber.

Axel saw the gesture and recognized it; his left hand clasped the handle of his blaster.

"The Force sending you a warning signal?" he asked quietly.

She nodded and pressed herself against the wall of the nearest building. She focused and reached out with the Force. "There's a welcoming committee," she murmured, and they both slowly peered around the corner. Down the street, they saw a human and a Rodian loitering outside one of the hangar bay entranceways, both cradling blasters in their arms and gazing about expectantly.

"Yep, right in front of my hangar," Axel whispered as he and Kilu stealthily drew back behind the wall.

"Those two are decoys," Kilu murmured. "Over a dozen people were after us earlier. The rest of them will be waiting to ambush us inside the hangar. We take these two out, think we're clear, walk inside, then they hit us."

"Figures," Axel said. "They intercepted your call and knew I was coming."

"What I don't understand is why they didn't just follow you." she said.

"Because I made sure I wasn't followed," he told her. "That's why I was a little late. Time to get out of here, wouldn't you say?"

Axel reached down to his belt buckle. The large, gaudy metallic buckle had several cheap imitation jewels embedded in it. Each jewel was part of a remote control system he'd engineered that allowed him to activate and guide the _Nomad _from a distance. He slid one jewel across the buckle, which unlocked the control system, then he pressed another jewel, which activated the beckon call that would order the _Nomad_ to fire up her engines and fly to his location.

He waited a minute, but heard nothing--not even the sound of his ship's engines warming up. Kilu had noticed his use of the belt buckle's control system--she'd seen him use it before--and waited expectantly with him.

"Nothing," Axel said. "They must be jamming the signal. Whoever these guys are, they're good. You got any bright ideas?"

"Maybe..." Kilu said. Slowly, she moved her head around the corner of the building to look down the street. "Get ready to follow me," she whispered to Axel.

Kilu extended her hand around the corner towards the two thugs, then spread her fingers. At the far end of the street, a loud rumble sounded, echoing off of the walls of the surrounding buildings in the cool night air. Instinctively, both the human and the Rodian standing in front of the hangar door turned towards the sound, both of them pointing their blasters towards where it seemed to originate. Kilu took advantage of the opportunity to run across the street and took cover behind another wall on the opposite side. Axel followed right on her heels.

"One step closer," he acknowledged quietly. "What now?"

Kilu glanced up. Like most cheap spacecraft hangars around the galaxy, these ones lacked roofs. The walls extended upwards about three meters; at the top would be nothing more than the whitewashed walls' narrow upper surface. These particular hangars had a rectangular layout, and the adjacent ones on the same block also shared common walls. The Jedi smiled. These thugs were good, but like many beings, they tended to think in two dimensions. They were expecting Kilu and Axel to walk up the street and straight into their trap--not to come in from another direction entirely.

"Here's what we do," she whispered to Axel, and briefly explained her plan as he listened attentively.

"Okay," he said, "good plan. There's just one problem with it."

"What's that?" she asked.

"I... don't like heights," he said.

She looked at him incredulously. "What?! But you're a starship pilot!" she said in an agitated whisper.

"That's different!" he said. "I've got a whole bunch of metal wrapped around me when I'm in a ship!"

Kilu sighed heavily. "It's the only way, so you'll just have to manage. It's _not _that high. Just... try not to look down."

"Yeah. Right." Axel said dubiously as he cast an anxious glance towards the top of the wall.

"Ready?" she asked.

Axel took a deep breath to steel himself, then nodded. Kilu bent her knees, then Force-jumped up to the top of the nearest hangar's wall. She then gestured back down towards Axel and used the Force to lift him up onto the top of the wall beside her. Once there, he gasped and teetered precariously. She reached out and placed a steadying hand on his shoulder.

"Breathe deeply," she said, imparting basic Jedi techniques for dealing with fear. "Focus on the reality, not the possibility."

"Right," Axel said. Even in the cool evening air, he could feel himself starting to sweat. The reality, he reflected, was that a fall from this height wouldn't kill him. It would just hurt like hell...

"Come on," Kilu said.

She then turned and nimbly ran along the narrow top edge of the wall as if she were still on the ground. Axel inched forward, keeping both his feet in contact with the wall's top edge as he shuffled after her. Kilu paused and turned around, then sighed as she saw how far behind Axel was. She reminded herself that very few people were ever taught to deal with their fears as Jedi were. In fact, she told herself, since Axel was scared of heights, his being up on the top of the wall was, in itself, a huge accomplishment. She kept telling herself this as she waited for him, struggling to keep her impatience at bay.

It took a good deal longer than she thought it would, but eventually they reached the hangar where the _Nomad _was waiting for them. She stole a glance at Axel; his face was bathed in sweat, his jaw clenched tightly, but he was there. Down in the hangar, Kilu's suspicions were proven correct. A dozen beings of various species were milling about down there near the inside of the entranceway. The thugs where conversing quietly with one another, obviously impatient for their quarry to finally appear. The noise gave Kilu and Axel enough cover to hold their own conversation on their high vantage point.

A disturbing thought occurred to Kilu as she remembered the fate of her previous transport. "Axel," she whispered into his ear, "you don't think they sabotaged your ship?"

Her breath was warm against the sensitive skin at the side of his neck, and her lips brushed against his ear, bringing back memories he didn't really want distracting him at the moment. He took a breath and focused on the matter at hand.

"I left her locked up tighter than a drum," he whispered back. "And Arf is programmed to watch for any sabotage attempts, internal or external." He caught her look of mild surprise. "What can I say, I'm in a competitive business," he explained quietly.

"Okay," she said, "here's the plan..."

She explained what she had in mind to him. His brows rose and he cast a hard, searching look at her. "You sure you're up for that?" he asked her.

"Hey, we took down a Sith together, remember?" she quietly reminded him--and herself. "What's a dozen under-trained thugs compared to _that_? So. You ready?"

Axel nodded his agreement, then slowly pulled his blaster from its holster and knelt on the wall's top. Kilu pulled her lightsaber from its belt clip. She crouched on top of the wall, her thump atop her weapon's activation button, and got ready. She was just about launch herself into her attack when she stopped; Axel had placed one hand upon her forearm. She turned to cast a puzzled glance his way; he leaned over to whisper in her ear.

"May the Force be with you," he said, then resumed his ready position.

She had to suppress an urge to kiss him for that. Instead, she took a deep breath and surrendered her will to that of the Force, beckoning it to guide her actions. Then she jumped.

* * *


	4. Chapter 4

**Fighting with Monsters**

**Star Wars: The Bergeron Chronicles, Part 2**

_a fanfic by Sisiutil_

* * *

**Chapter 4**

For too long, Kilu Branon and many of her comrades in the New Jedi Order fervently believed, the Jedi had been absent from the galaxy. The Great Jedi Purge at the beginning of the dark period of Imperial rule had made the order all but extinct, save for a handful of Jedi who were forced into hiding on the most far-flung worlds at the very edge of inhabited space. As a result, the inhabitants of the galaxy's many star systems had nearly forgotten about their former guardians of peace and justice. Many of the good people of the galaxy had forgotten what protection the Jedi could provide; even worse, the evil beings inhabiting the galaxy--of which there were far, far too many--had lost their fear of the Jedi. Granted, whoever was behind the recent attack that had killed her Master had sent over a dozen thugs against two Jedi; but to attack the Jedi at all showed how ignorant these beings were of the power a Jedi could wield. It showed a lack of proper respect. Kilu was now determined to show the thugs who had killed her Master how foolish it was to attack a Jedi at all. Even a mere apprentice Jedi such as herself.

Kilu Force-jumped off of the top of the wall, aiming for a spot directly in the middle of the dozen beings who were waiting in ambush for her. As she soared towards them, she activated her lightsaber. The weapon's low hum and the bright green flash of its blade were the first indication to the thugs that something was horribly, terribly wrong. Kilu landed perfectly in their midst and swung her body and her blade in a deadly arc. Before her adversaries could even react, she had reduced their number by four; they lay on the floor of the hanger, two of them sliced in half at the waist, the others lacking whole limbs. The screams of those who still lived stuck terror into the hearts of their companions, who fumbled clumsily as they strove to bring their weapons to bear.

Kilu's lightsaber blade swung at her closest adversary, slicing off the man's blaster hand at the wrist. He fell to the ground, his screams adding to the general confusion. Another thug, further away, managed to aim his blaster. The weapon spat a bolt of hot energy at her. Moving like a dancer and guided by the Force, Kilu swung her lightsaber around her body; she managed to ricochet the shot harmlessly off the bright green blade of energy and directly back to the man who'd fired it. The bolt caught him flush in the chest, and he fell backwards, dying before his body struck the ground.

The remaining thugs back-pedalled out of range of the lightsaber's deadly blade and began to fire. As Kilu's weapon rapidly shifted and swung to block their shots, the other part of her plan came into effect. From the top of the wall, Axel began to fire his blaster at their opponents, picking off gunmen from a safe distance and without risk of hitting Kilu. Only four opponents remained now...

Just then, the door to the hangar opened, and two more thugs, the human and the Rodian who had been waiting outside, ran in to aid their companions. Axel saw them enter. Kilu was several meters away, preoccupied with blocking blaster shots from the remaining attackers. Her back was to the two newcomers. They were raising their blasters, and from this angle, Axel could take out one, but not both, before they got a shot away. Perhaps she could block the shot. Then again, perhaps not. He couldn't take the chance. Not with Kilu's life on the line.

Axel didn't even think about what he did next, he just did it. He yelled at the top of his lungs and took a few rapid steps along the wall's top, his fear of heights suddenly forgotten. He then dove, still yelling, throwing himself at the two newcomers.

His gambit worked; they turned away from Kilu to look up at this new threat descending from above. Axel fired his blaster, his shots going wide as he fell, but his whole objective was to take their attention away from Kilu. In that regard, he succeeded, perhaps too well. The human swung his blaster around towards Axel and fired just before the freighter pilot landed on top of him. The shot tore through the flesh of Axel's right upper arm; his yell changed from one of aggression to one of pain. He fell on top of the human, who broke his fall, and together, the two struggled. Axel brought his knee up in between the man's legs and felt his opponent's body stiffen in sudden, debilitating pain. He brought his knee up again just for good measure.

The Rodian back-pedalled from where Axel was fighting his partner, then raised his blaster. Out of the corner of his eye, Axel caught the movement. He wrapped his still-functioning left arm around the groaning, pain-wracked human beneath him and rolled over, pulling his opponent on top of him. The Rodian's blaster shot ripped into his partner's back, killing him. From underneath the dying human, Axel raised his blaster and shot the Rodian in the chest twice. The alien fell to his knees, then over to his side.

Kilu, meanwhile, was still fending off blaster shots. She blocked one more, then Force-jumped high into the air through a forward somersault and twist. She landed in behind her adversaries and swiped her blade at them before they could even turn around to face her. Three of them fell; one remained. She raised her lightsaber, holding it between herself and her remaining opponent in a defensive posture. The lightsaber's bright tip was pointing directly at his face, illuminating the burly human's thick, unruly black beard and his fearful eyes. Silently, with her dark brown eyes holding his terrified gaze, Kilu dared him to attack. Wisely, he declined; he released his grip on his blaster and let it drop to the ground, then turned and ran past her to the hangar door. Kilu let him go.

"He's... getting away," Axel said as he pushed his dead human opponent off of himself. The man's body weight had shifted, pinning Axel's left arm and preventing him from taking a shot at their retreating opponent himself.

"Yes," Kilu said. "And he'll be scared, and he'll spread the word. He'll tell others what it's like to fight a _Jedi_," she added with no small amount of satisfaction. She turned and looked at Axel and saw him grasping his right arm and grimacing as he struggled to rise to his feet. "You're hurt!" she exclaimed, and ran over to him.

"Thanks for noticing," he muttered through a pained grimace.

"It's just a flesh wound," Kilu said with some relief as she took a quick glance at his burned upper right tricep. "You still have that medi-kit aboard?"

"Of course," Axel said. He turned to face his ship. "Arf! ARF! Open the damn door, it's me! Arf!"

Kili smiled and laughed briefly as the boarding ramp lowered in front of them. "You should have come up with a different nickname for your droid. This one makes you sound like a dog," she said as the port-side loading bay ramp lowered. Axel turned to glare at her, but said nothing, which Kilu realized was a refreshing change of pace. As they waited, she defensively reached out around them with the Force. "Damn," she swore quietly.

"What's wrong _now_?" Axel asked her, his left hand still covering his aching right tricep.

"You were right," she said. "I should have killed him. It looks like he's gone to get reinforcements. And..."

"And _what_?" Axel demanded testily as they walked up the boarding ramp.

"And," she said, casting an apologetic glance at him, "he'll probably alert the ship that's waiting for us in orbit." She shrugged abashedly.

Axel stopped in his tracks to fix her with an angry glare. "I hate to say I told you so..."

"Since when?" Kilu asked ruefully.

"You're right," Axel said. "I told you so. Next time, kill _all _the bad guys. That's what they're there for." He slapped the wall panel to close the loading bay door, then grimaced as he brought his hand back to cover his upper arm again.

"Can you fly with one hand?" she asked him.

"Sweetheart," he said as a cocky grin appeared on his face, "I can do a _lot_ of things with just one hand. As you should well remember."

Her response to that was to roll her eyes and follow him to the cockpit. "Men..." she muttered under her breath.

* * *


	5. Chapter 5

**Fighting with Monsters**

**Star Wars: The Bergeron Chronicles, Part 2**

_a fanfic by Sisiutil_

* * *

**Chapter 5**

"You said _ship_. Singular. I _heard_ you," he snapped.

"Do I _look_ like a long-range sensor to you?" she replied sharply.

Aboard the _Nomad_, things were rapidly going from bad to worse. Axel had managed to launch the YT-1300 light freighter, but had been intercepted by not one, but by three other ships once the _Nomad _had left the atmosphere. Steady blaster fire buffeted the ship, making Axel and Kilu lurch in the cockpit's chairs, even with their restraints fastened. Axel had to focus all his attention on evasive maneuvering, which left him with no time to input coordinates into the navicomputer in preparation for a jump to hyperspace.

"No, you look beautiful. As always," he said testily.

She turned to stare at him in mild surprise, but the resentful tone in his voice kind of spoiled the compliment. The _Nomad _shook from another explosion and Kilu reminded herself that they had bigger concerns at the moment than how they felt about one another.

"Shields at sixty percent," Axel said tersely. "Arf! See if you can't divert more power to the shields!" The droid responded with a series of doubtful beeps and whistles. "I don't know!" Axel shouted back over his shoulder. "Draw it from the freight loader... the running lights... the damn caf pot, just _do _it!"

"Tell me we're going to make it," Kilu said from beside him.

"Why do women always want men to lie to them?" Axel muttered in response, earning him a questioning, anxious look from Kilu.

Another blast made contact with the ship's deflectors, and both Axel and Kilu were thrown in their seats. Axel's right bicep slammed against the back of his seat, and he gasped in pain.

"You're not looking so hot, flyboy," Kilu said to him as she took in the paleness of his face, which was covered with sweat. "We have to get out of here, into hyperspace. _Now_."

"I don't even know where we're going!" Axel responded, his teeth clenched. Another blast slammed into the ship. "Shields at forty percent! ARF!"

"Anywhere that isn't here would be good!" Kilu told him; her Jedi training was failing her, and the panic in her voice was rising.

"Hang on!" Axel said.

He reached out to his command console and punched in another defensive maneuver. The _Nomad_'s maneuvering thrusters fired, and the ship suddenly lurched to port. Then the _Nomad _rotated a one hundred and eighty degree turn on its vertical axis so they now faced the three pursuing ships. Axel increased power to the sub-light engines, launching the ship past its pursuers and throwing he and Kilu back into their seats. The maneuver bought them a few precious seconds. Axel reached back towards his ship's navicomputer and quickly brought up a collection of pre-set coordinates for his most common trips. He selected one, ordering the computer to determine the hyperspace route to that destination. Then he turned his attention back to flying. At that moment, a warning light started flashing on the panel above his seat.

"Oh no," Axel said, his eyes opening wide as he stared at the flashing light. "No no no no no no NO!"

"What? What!?" Kilu asked anxiously.

"The hyperdrive just shorted out." He stole a quick, anxious glance at Kilu. "Must have got hit by a power surge--feedback from the shields during a blaster impact or something."

"That's _really_ not good," she said, and then her body jerked forward as the ship was rocked by another blast. Obviously their pursuers had recovered from Axel's creative maneuver of a few seconds before.

"No kidding!" Axel replied, then turned to shout over his shoulder. "Arf! Forget the shields! Fix the hyperdrive! You hear me? Fix..." He was interrupted by another blast that shook the ship, and another warning light started flashing on the overhead console. "Shields at fifteen percent... ARF! Belay that! Fix the shields!" Axel pushed himself from his seat. The droid beeped a question back to him. "_I'll _fix the hyperdrive!"

"Wait!" Kilu shouted at him. "Who's going to _fly_ this thing!?"

"You are!" Axel said to her.

"WHAT!?" Kilu shouted back, her eyes open wide with shock. "I've never flown anything _like _this ship before!"

"Use the Force!" Axel yelled at her as he leaned down and pressed a switch that transferred control of the ship to the co-pilot's station, where Kilu was seated. The young Jedi stared at the unfamiliar console in front of her in bewilderment, utterly uncertain as to what to do. All her carefully-maintained Jedi calm was gone. Then she felt Axel's hand on her shoulder. "I mean it," he said as she turned to look up at him. "You're a Jedi. I _believe_ in you." He then turned and ran down the cockpit's access corridor, heading for the engineering section as the rear of the ship.

The ship lurched from another blaster impact, and Kilu's eyes read the shield levels: five percent. The next shot would reduce the deflector shields to nothing, and the shot after that, if needed, would blow them to pieces. Death seemed certain, survival next to impossible. Axel was going to work on the hyperdrive, his droid was working on the shields, and she was left to fly a ship she had no experience with whatsoever. It all seemed so pointless--they were moments away from death.

Suddenly, inside her mind, a light went on. She turned her head back over her shoulder. "Arf!" she called out to Axel's agromech droid. "Life support! Draw the power for the shields from life support!" The little droid beeped an acknowledgement. "Don't need it if we're dead anyway," Kilu muttered. A moment later, the shield level rose to twenty-five percent. "Better than nothing," she said. The air and heat that remained inside the ship would keep them alive for the few minutes they probably had left.

Accepting their fate seemed to have calmed her. She took a deep breath and called upon the Force. Then she lifted her hands to the touch-sensitive console and started tapping in commands.

The _Nomad_ turned hard to starboard until its bow pointed towards Tatooine's twin suns. The bright orbs flared in the cockpit windows, which took a moment to automatically adjust their filter level. The sensors also overloaded for a moment before recovering. None of this affected Kilu, whose eyes were closed as she let the Force guide her. She hoped--no, she _knew--_that their pursuers' ships were experiencing the same temporary blinding effect. She was counting on it.

She tapped in another command, and the _Nomad _suddenly pitched upwards, flying in a high, tight circle, looping around in behind her pursuers. The _Nomad_'s sole armaments were two laser blasters mounted in her forward mandibles. For the first time in the fight, those weapons had a target in sight. Kilu pressed the command to fire, and the blaster bolts tore into one of the pursuing ships' sub-light engines, crippling it. The other two ships suddenly veered off. Kilu steered the Nomad so it stayed behind one of them, forcing that ship into a series of evasive maneuvers to avoid a shot from the _Nomad_'s blasters like those that had crippled her sister ship. Meanwhile, the second ship attempted to pursue the _Nomad_, but found she had to hold her fire; every time the freighter came within target range, the _Nomad _shifted suddenly, putting the first ship in the last one's targets.

"Try it now!" Axel's voice crackled over the ship's intercom, stirring Kilu from her Force-trance.

"Huh?" she exclaimed. "What?"

"The hyperdrive!" Axel's voice yelled to her. "Activate the hyperdrive!"

"Hyperdrive hyperdrive hyperdrive..." Kilu muttered as her gaze roamed over the controls. A blast from the pursuing ship rocked the _Nomad_, making Kilu gasp. She closed her eyes for a moment and forced herself to remember what Axel did when he activated the ship's hyperdrive engines. "Got it!" She opened her eyes and pushed a chrome-colored lever in between the pilot and co-pilot's chairs. In a heartbeat, the star field in the ship's windows elongated, then changed to mottled blue on a black background as the _Nomad _made the jump to hyperspace. Kilu sat back and let out a huge, relieved sigh.

"Nice flying, babe," Axel's voice said with genuine admiration, and Kilu bestowed a big, appreciative smile on the intercom speaker... a smile which she knew she could never again let him see in person.

* * *


	6. Chapter 6

**Fighting with Monsters**

**Star Wars: The Bergeron Chronicles, Part 2**

_a fanfic by Sisiutil_

* * *

**Chapter 6**

"OW!" Axel exclaimed as Kilu tried to clean the blaster wound on his upper right arm.

They were seated at the circular table in the _Nomad_'s passenger lounge, which was doubling as an infirmary at the moment. Axel's shirt was off, allowing Kilu easier access to his wound. Removing his damaged jacket and shirt had been painful, and he'd groaned and complained through the entire procedure, trying Kilu's patience despite her Jedi training. She had the ship's rudimentary medical kit open on the table. Some of the kit's equipment and salves would be considered primitive by any self-respecting medical droid, but the stuff worked. Assuming the patient allowed them to be applied, of course.

"Quit squirming!" she told him.

"You're doing it wrong!" he complained.

"All Jedi have training in emergency field medicine," she asserted, a little haughtily.

"Were you sick that day? OW!" he shouted as she pressed gauze soaked with antiseptic against the wound; it stung. "You did that on purpose!"

"Oh, don't be such a big baby!"

"I'm _not_ a _baby_," he said, a little more petulantly than he'd intended.

Kilu couldn't help it. She started to laugh. He turned his head and glared at her, which only made her laugh harder. In spite of himself, her mood suddenly became infectious. His lips curled into a smile, then he laughed as well--at himself, and out of relief for surviving their recent ordeal. And because, in spite of what had happened between them several months ago, it felt good--_incredibly _good--to be in her presence once again.

"It's good to see you, Kilu," Axel, grinning, said earnestly once their laughter died down. His face then became more serious. "I've missed you."

Kilu also became more serious--in fact, her face suddenly became downright unreadable. Axel was taken aback; she had always been able to project that Jedi aura of unflappable cool, but he'd always been able to read her eyes. Not anymore, however; he gazed into her dark brown eyes and couldn't read her mood at all. It was yet another reflection of how far her Jedi training had been progressing, he reflected. And, he thought sadly, how she was growing away from him.

She silently retrieved a sealed antiseptic medipad from the kit and opened its packaging. "I called you because I needed your help, Axel," she told him. "I had no desire to... open any old wounds," she said with an apologetic smile as she pressed the medipad to his injury until its adhesive bonded with his skin. "Or inflict new ones."

Axel glanced at his bandaged wound. "Too bad you can't patch up a broken heart that way," he muttered.

Kilu could not suppress an exasperated sigh. "Axel," she said, "we went over this months ago. You're being unfair, and you know it. I _told _you how it had to be, how Jedi can't indulge in permanent attachments. And you agreed and understood, or I _thought_ you did. We had what we had, and it was... lovely. And then we got to Coruscant, and you got all..."

"What?" he prompted her, a defensive tone creeping into his voice. "I got all what?"

"...As clingy as a Calamarian octopod," she muttered. In spite of the painful memory it evoked, they both smiled at the colorful metaphor.

Axel turned from her and stared off at a distant corner of the lounge. She was right and he knew it. She'd been very clear from the start that whatever happened between them couldn't be permanent. His head had accepted that, but his heart had seen things differently. So when they arrived at the galactic capital... well, Axel reflected abashedly, he'd made a fool of himself. Her metaphor was apt. He'd told her how he felt. He'd asked her to stay with him. He'd actually got down on his knees, much to her chagrin. He'd begged, he'd cajoled, he'd pleaded, and when none of that worked, the shouting had begun. Knowing how shamefully he'd behaved didn't change the way he felt, however--or invalidate it.

He gingerly pulled his shirt back on, then paused. "What would it be like for you," he asked her quietly, "if tomorrow, you suddenly lost your connection with the Force? If you lost your ability to... see that extra layer of light around everything that makes the entire universe just that much more beautiful and special to you?" He turned his head to look her directly in the eye. "That's what it was like for me. When you left. I tried to suppress it, but... I feel what I feel."

Kilu looked away from him. What could she say to that? Those were words that most females in the galaxy would kill to hear a man say to her. But she was not a typical woman--she was a Jedi. Her life was not her own; it was pledged to a higher purpose. Master Skywalker had made sure she had no illusions when she'd joined the Order: there would be costs, many of them dear. She'd accepted that, or said she had. But it was one thing to accept such costs as a concept. It was quite another to experience them, and the wrenching emotional toll they took, especially for the first time.

"Well," Axel said when he realized Kilu was not going to respond to what he'd said, "it's my problem, isn't it? So I'll just have to deal with it. Somehow," he added, with a rueful grin. "Besides, it sounds like you have bigger problems right now than some love-sick freighter jockey."

Kilu took the hint that he was willing to drop the matter and change subjects, and she was glad for it. "Yes," she said. "I don't even know where we're supposed to be going right now!" She frowned and looked at him, remembering those moments of panic during the firefight above the planet's atmosphere, when Axel had chosen a course, _any _course, to get them into hyperspace and away from their pursuers. "Where _are _we going, anyway? Back to Sessram Prime?"

"No," he replied as he buttoned up his shirt. "Since I'm based there, I thought they might head back to the Sessram system to intercept us. So I chose one of my preset courses." He looked at her, and an impish grin appeared on his face. "We're currently headed for Hedonis," he told her.

Kilu's arched auburn brows rose. "The pleasure planet?"

Axel shrugged. "I could use a vacation right about now," he said. "How about you?" Her only response was a cocked eyebrow and a lopsided grin. "Yeah, that's what I thought."

"You go to Hedonis a lot, do you?" she asked pointedly.

"It's one of my most popular passenger fares," he told her. "What, you think _I _can afford the place? I can barely manage their landing fees!"

"Well, let's figure out where we actually need to go," Kilu said, then reached into her tunic's inside pocket. She pulled out a data chip and held it up in front of her.

"What's on there?" Axel asked her.

"I'm actually not sure," she admitted. "But I think..." she began to say, then hesitated and looked at him. "I was told not to discuss my mission with anyone outside the Jedi Order," she said.

"Oh," Axel said, feeling a little crestfallen.

"But... I know I can trust you," she continued.

He turned to look at her, his blue eyes suddenly burning with intensity. "With your life," he said earnestly.

She didn't respond to that; instead, she simply handed him the data chip. Axel pressed a button on the side of the passenger lounge's table which activated a holographic computer display on the tabletop. He took the data chip and inserted it into a slot in the table. A moment later, the table-based display showed an astronavigational chart in three dimensions. It first depicted the entire galaxy, then slowly zoomed in on the galaxy's outer Tingel Arm, then moved further in until the display narrowed down to a specific star system. The fourth planet in the system was blinking.

"What's this supposed to be?" Axel asked Kilu.

She was silent for a moment, staring at the star chart reverently. Then she took a deep breath and returned her attention to him. "First, a little history lesson," she said. "The Great Jedi Purge at the end of the Old Republic didn't just destroy the Jedi themselves. Many of our records were lost as well. Some we destroyed ourselves, to keep them from falling into the hands of the Sith. But some of the few Jedi who survived the purge took portions of our records with them into hiding. Many of those records are still out there, waiting for us to find them."

"What's in these records?" he asked.

Kilu shrugged. "We won't know until we find them. It could treatises on meditation techniques or fighting styles, lost writings of ancient Jedi masters, or the journals of Jedi whose lives deserve to be remembered--and revered. The point is, all this lost information is sacred to us. You've heard me recite our code: 'There is no ignorance; there is knowledge.' Being without these records is... _painful_ to us. And yes, some of it could have practical applications that could help us."

Axel looked at the astronavigational display in front of him. "So some of your lost records are here on this planet?"

"That's what our source claimed," she said, "before he was killed. Someone else wants that information too."

"Or doesn't want _you_ to find it," Axel posited, and Kilu nodded her acknowledgement of that possibility. "Hey, wait a minute... I _know _that system," he told her. "Azitchen, it's called. The planet that's blinking is called Cetachuya, but it's uninhabited by sentient life. At least, not anymore."

Kilu cast a sideways glance at him. "If there are no sentients there, how do you know about it?" she asked as a puzzled frown appeared on her features.

"Some smugglers have used it as a secret base in the past," he said.

Kilu smiled. "You know, you keep telling me you're not a smuggler, and then you betray some knowledge like that..."

"Hey, most of the people in my profession _are _smugglers," he said defensively. "I hang out with them. I hear things."

"Okay," Kilu said with a teasing grin. Then something Axel had said a moment ago caught her attention. "Wait a minute," she said. "What do you mean, there are no sentients there _anymore_?"

Axel took a deep breath as he stared at the flashing holographic planet. "There was a flourishing civilization there, once... hundreds of thousands of years ago. Pre-spaceflight. Then they all just... vanished."

"They died out?" Kilu asked.

Axel shook his head. "No. No one knows what happened to them. Some of the smugglers say the place is haunted by their spirits."

Kilu mulled this information over. "Well," she said a moment later, "it sounds like a good place to hide something, if the ghost stories will keep away the inquisitive."

Axel tapped the controls on the display console so that the holographic zoomed in further to the planet itself. The graphic displayed a planet that was green and lush, redolent with life, but with heavy cloud cover as well.

"A jungle world," Kilu commented.

The display kept zooming in, flying through the atmosphere to a region of the planet just north of its equator. As the display closed in further, it displayed a high altitude picture depicting a cluster of ancient buildings, some square, some rectangular, all apparently built from stone but difficult to discern because of the vegetation overgrowing them. The display finally came to rest with a bright white outline flashing around one particular stone construction.

"I gather your Jedi records are in there somewhere," Axel said. "The data doesn't seem to get any more localized than that."

"Searching one building is easier than searching a whole planet," Kilu said brightly.

Axel smiled. "The glass is always half-full for you, isn't it?"

Kilu returned his smile. It _was _good to be working with him again. Of course there was nothing like having another Jedi watching one's back, but some of her compatriots in the Order could be... a little overzealous at times, typical of recent converts to any organization with mystical overtones. She often felt that she was being watched carefully, and judged--and that feeling was often justified. With Axel, she could let her guard down a little and just be herself. Provided, of course, he didn't get all touchy about their relationship. Which, she reminded herself hastily, was all in the past.

Axel relayed the information from the data chip to the _Nomad_'s navigational computer. Within a couple of minutes, the computer indicated with a simple _breep _that it had calculated the hyperspace path to the new coordinates. Axel used a command on the tabletop to confirm the new course, then he shut down the holo display and the table returned to its usual simple function of being a surface for cups and plates. He handed the data chip back to Kilu.

"We'll be there in about four days," he told her.

She looked back into his eyes, and the same thought crossed both their minds: they were going to be together for four days in close quarters with little to do. Pleasant but now unwelcome memories of what they'd done the last time they'd been together on such a long space voyage flooded their minds. Kilu took a deep breath and sought to center herself in the Force. Axel shifted in his seat and coughed.

"So!" Axel said, firing up the table's holographic display again. "Care for a rousing game of holochess?"

* * *


	7. Chapter 7

**Fighting with Monsters**

**Star Wars: The Bergeron Chronicles, Part 2**

_a fanfic by Sisiutil_

* * *

**Chapter 7**

There are only so many holochess games one can play in a row, both Axel and Kilu decided.

Both of them fervently tried, on the four-day long trip to the Azitchen system, to preserve the now-platonic nature of their relationship. But Axel kept finding it harder to repress his feelings, and his emotional discomfort disturbed Kilu's equilibrium with the Force. By the end of the first day, without even discussing it, they both independently decided to spend as much time apart as they could. The relatively small size of the _Nomad_ made that difficult, but they managed. Axel busied himself first with repairs the recent firefight made necessary, then with several maintenance tasks, some of which he'd been putting off for months. Kilu, for her part, spent a great deal of time in her cabin, meditating. They occasionally encountered one another in the exercise area Axel had installed in one of the cargo bays, or in the passenger lounge to share a meal. Then they parted company and returned to pointedly avoiding one another, Axel returning to his ship maintenance, Kilu to her meditation.

But as with holochess, there is only so much time one can spend in meditation. Kilu soon felt as though she would be able to write a new Jedi treatise on the practice by the time the trip ended. She grew restless. In typical Jedi fashion, she recognized and acknowledged the feeling; but rather than set it aside, she indulged it by wandering around the ship. Thus, on the third day of their trip, she soon found Axel. He was sitting in the pilot's chair in the cockpit, staring out the thick windows at the hazy bluish shapes flying by the ship as it passed through hyperspace.

"I hope I'm not disturbing you?" she said softly as she stepped into the cabin.

"Hmm?" Axel said, roused from his reverie. "No, I was just sitting here, staring out the window."

Kilu gently reached out to him with the Force. She sensed less of the turbulent emotions he'd been feeling towards her earlier; she relaxed a little. Perhaps he was, she thought, putting those feelings behind him now, as she had. She decided to stay and talk to him; she'd been missing his company while they'd been avoiding one another. She moved into the cockpit and sat down in the co-pilot's chair, curling up her legs underneath herself.

"You should be careful," she said, half-facetiously. "I've heard that you can go crazy if you stare out into hyperspace for too long."

Axel responded to that remark with a derisive grunt. "Ridiculous," he said. "That's an old wives' tale. I was _born_ in hyperspace. Literally. On this very ship, on one of my dad's passenger runs; good thing one of them on that trip was a nurse. I've probably spent more time in hyperspace than I have in any realspace location. And a lot of that time I've spent right here, looking out the window. Do I seem crazy to you? Don't answer that," he quickly added, and they both laughed softly. He turned his gaze back out the window at the amorphous shapes flitting by. "In many ways... this is my home," he said quietly.

"I didn't realize you were born in hyperspace itself," Kilu said, remembering him telling her during their previous time together that he'd been born aboard the _Nomad_.

"Oh yes," Axel said. He frowned and pressed his fingertips together. "It raises a significant philosophical issue."

"What's that?" Kilu asked, a bemused smile on her lips.

"Do I actually exist?" he asked rhetorically.

Kilu did not laugh or contradict him, as most people would surely have done. Jedi spent just as much time engaging in spiritual and philosophical research and debate as they did practicing combat skills--more, in fact. Therefore the question was one with which she was very familiar. Nevertheless, rather than posit her own perspective, she was suddenly interested in hearing his.

"Explain," she prompted him. She placed her left arm atop the back of her padded chair and leaned her head against her hand.

"Think about it," Axel said. "When you enter hyperspace, you cease to exist in realspace--in the real universe, as it were. Since I was therefore born outside of reality, how can I possibly exist?"

"That's actually a different question," Kilu told him, smiling. "How any form of life exists in the universe is a different, and much larger, question. As for whether you _do _exist, despite your existentially questionable origins, you undoubtedly do."

"How can you be so sure?" he asked lightly, his gaze still dreamily directed out of the cockpit windows.

"Simple," she replied. "I can see you, hear you, touch you..." She saw him stir slightly when she said that, so she hurried on past it. "Therefore you exist."

"Ah," he responded, his smile broadening, "but you Jedi are taught to be dubious about the evidence presented to you by your senses."

"True," she conceded with a smile.

"So what other evidence in favor of my existence can you offer?"

"There's one sense that can't be fooled," she said. "I can sense you through the Force."

Suddenly, Axel's expression lost all evidence of amusement. "Can you really?" he asked her softly.

"Yes," she said, her smile fading in response to his changing mood. "Of course I can."

"That's... reassuring," he said with a nod of his head. He paused for a moment, then spoke evenly, but Kilu could sense the strong emotions behind the words. "I am merely one of several billion beings in the galaxy, let alone the universe. I was born outside of reality. I also spend most of my time there. I'm not Force-sensitive. I have no family..." Again, he paused; Kilu was watching him closely now. A wan smile appeared on his lips. "So... it's good to know I do have a presence. For someone."

"You do," she whispered, then reached out to place her hand on top of his. He raised his head and turned to look at her. Their eyes met. Suddenly Kilu felt her heart pounding in her chest. She felt a flush rising in her skin. She swallowed; her throat felt tight. As she watched, Axel leaned towards her, and his lips parted as if to speak, or to...

She pulled her hand back from his.

Axel coughed. Then he laughed briefly--uncomfortably. She did the same.

"Well," he said as he rose from the pilot's chair, "I'm going to go, uh, check on the alluvial dampers," he said, gesturing over his shoulder with his thumb. "The ion particle blocking plates were losing efficiency, so maybe the servomotors need... something you don't really care about," he said, his voice trailing off.

"Right," Kilu said, rising from her chair as well. "I'm... going back to my cabin. To meditate." _Yup, I've completely put those feelings behind me_, Kilu thought sarcastically, _like a pod racer leaving behind the starting gate, yes sir... _

They both took a step forward towards the cockpit corridor and nearly collided. They smiled at one another abashedly. Axel awkwardly gestured for Kilu to go first, which she did, with a quick nod of thanks. Axel watched her walk down the corridor, or at least he did for a moment before he forced himself to look away from her retreating backside.

"Check the dampers," he muttered to himself, "then another cold shower..." He glanced at the navicomputer's chronometer: six hours until arrival. Surely he could survive until then. Of course, he didn't even want to think about how he was going to mange on the return trip.

* * *

"Prepare my ship," Darth Mostrus commanded.

"At once," Captain Wurkun Darr responded, then nodded to a young lieutenant, who promptly saluted and marched off to carry out the order.

"You are uneasy, Captain Darr," Mostrus said once they were alone in one of the many immaculately clean and polished corridors of the Imperial star destroyer _Dauntless_.

Darr looked at Mostrous and reflected that he _always _felt uneasy in the presence of the Sith Lord. It wasn't just his high position within the Empire's command structure that was bereft of rank, something that any career military officer such as Darr would find unsettling. With his dark hair, dark eyes, tall, muscular build, and those red and black tattoos covering every inch of his skin, Darth Mostrus looked like something out of a child's nightmare--which he supposed was the point. At least Vader had worn that suit to cover up his disfigurement. Even so, something else was indeed bothering Captain Darr.

"With all due respect, my Lord, having you go in alone..."

"...is necessary, as I have explained to you several times," Mostrus explained, an edge of impatience coming into his voice. He sighed and adopted a voice as though he were explaining something to a small child. "My appearance must be timed for maximum impact. If they detect an Imperial star destroyer snooping about in the system, well, it kind of spoils the surprise, doesn't it?"

"I see your point," Darr conceded.

"At long last!" Darth Mostrus exclaimed with mock enthusiasm. "And remember to stay out of my way until I call for you. Trust me, I am more than capable of handling a mere Jedi trainee and a Force-insensitive freighter pilot on my own," he said disdainfully. The Sith then bestowed his closest approximation to a sympathetic glance upon the Imperial naval officer. "Fear not, captain. When Kilu Branon is once again my apprentice, we will use her like a weapon against the despised Jedi and their rebel friends in the New Republic. Soon, you will have military engagements a-plenty to indulge your penchant for strategy and tactics... and for dealing out death on a grand scale."

"I sincerely hope so, my Lord," Darr said with a subtle bow and barely-repressed eagerness as the Sith Lord walked into the starship's hangar bay and his own personal shuttle. "But what of these rumoured Jedi records?" he asked. "A scanning team could..."

"I suspect it's little more than a rumour," Darth Mostrus said with a shrug. "A rumour that has served my purposes admirably. But if you think the scanning teams could use some practice, by all means deploy them. _After _I am done."

"Of course, my Lord," Captain Darr said. The Imperial officer then frowned. "May I ask, Lord Mostrus... what if the Jedi refuses your offer?"

Darth Mostrus paused at the bottom of his shuttle's boarding ramp and cast a sideways glance at Darr. "I should think the consequences of that would be obvious," he replied, "to her as well as to yourself." His fingers were upon the hilt of his lightsaber as he spoke.

* * *


	8. Chapter 8

**Fighting with Monsters**

**Star Wars: The Bergeron Chronicles, Part 2**

_a fanfic by Sisiutil_

* * *

**Chapter 8**

When the _Nomad _dropped out of hyperspace deep inside the Azitchen system, Axel's attention was wholly focused on his ship's sensors, watching for other ships lying in wait. He fully expected to be ambushed--not because Kilu had any evidence that her pursuers knew where she'd been headed, but because it would be typical of their luck. He already had a course to another star system preset for the navicomputer so they could make a quick escape. The _Nomad_, after all, was a freighter. Unlike other YT-1300s--such as the legendary _Millennium Falcon_--neither Axel nor his father had seen fit to outfit her with heavy armaments or additional shielding. Thus, the wisest course of action for him was to run from a fight, not stick it out, which he was thoroughly prepared to do. Fortunately, that appeared unnecessary. 

"Nothing," he said after scanning the sensor displays. "No ships in the vicinity, including in orbit. That doesn't mean there aren't any down on the surface, camouflaged or something." He turned from the sensor displays to glance at Kilu, who was seated in the co-pilot's chair. She was staring at the planet intently. "What's wrong?" 

"I'm... not sure," she said. 

"Something in the Force?" 

"No," she replied. "Not really--it's something else. If I had to put a name to it, I'd say it was... déjà vu." She tore her eyes away from the planet to look at Axel. "I feel like I've been here before." She looked away from him and shook her head, silently telling him that she couldn't remember when, if ever, she had actually visited Cetachuya before. 

Axel frowned. He wasn't sure how to interpret Kilu's feelings about the planet, and evidently she couldn't either. He decided that unless she--through the Force--or the sensors indicated a definite danger, it didn't affect their mission.

"I'm going to set us down near that structure identified by your data chip," he said. 

A few minutes later, the _Nomad _had landed on a relatively flat area a few hundred meters from the structure in question. Axel and Kilu approached the boarding ramp, which had not yet been lowered. Axel checked the external environmental display on the boarding ramp's control panel. 

"Breathable atmosphere," he said, then he grunted and pulled his jacket off, hanging it from an equipment hook on the wall. He glanced at Kilu. "You're _not _going to want to wear that Jedi robe," he told her. "It's forty-six centigrade out there, and the humidity is ninety-two percent." 

Kilu's eyes widened a little. "I've been in saunas that were cooler," she said, then shrugged out of her long black robe and handed it to Axel so he could hang it up next to his jacket. 

Axel tapped the command console, and the boarding ramp lowered. As soon as it opened, the hot, wet fetid air of the jungle planet rushed in, washing over the two humans and making both of them feel like they needed a shower. They hadn't even taken a step, and already they were both starting to sweat. They glanced at one another ruefully, and then started removing additional layers of clothing. Axel pulled off his shirt so all he wore was wide-necked sleeveless white undershirt. Kilu removed her wrap-around tunic, then the simple long-sleeved shirt she wore under that, so her torso was covered by nothing more than a sleeveless undershirt similar to Axel's. The freighter pilot couldn't help noticing how nicely she filled out that undershirt, but by exerting considerable amount of self-control, he managed to pull his eyes away from her body. He strapped an equipment belt around his waist so he now carried a flashlight, a commlink, several meters of rope, a rudimentary medical kit, a knife and a bottle of water. Kilu wore her own belt, from which hung her lightsaber. Together they walked down the ramp towards the steaming jungle. 

"Arf," Axel said over his shoulder to his agromech droid, "watch the sensors. If _any _ship appears overhead, I want to know about it." He tapped the commlink on his belt as he reached the bottom of the ramp as R4-E6 warbled an agreement. "Okay, close her up." Arf closed the door behind them, as instructed; Axel didn't relish the idea of getting back to the ship only to find it populated by poisonous reptiles or some temperamental local carnivore. 

The ground felt damp and springy beneath their feet; instead of dirt, they walked upon a thick ground coating of moss, rotting vegetation, and tree roots. Colorful birds watched them from the broad-leafed trees, cocking their heads to one side to study the newcomers, then flying off and making loud, hooting cries. Legless reptiles slithered away into the undergrowth, eager to get out of their way as they walked. The air was redolent with the malodorous scent of rotting plant material and stagnant water. Insects buzzed around them. 

"Watch out for sink holes," Axel cautioned her. 

"There aren't any," Kilu replied. 

Axel stopped dead in his tracks and turned to look at her, a surprised frown on his face. "How do you know that?" he asked.

"Because I _have_ been here before," she said quietly. 

Kilu had stopped walking as well, but her dark brown eyes were roaming over the landscape, especially at the stone structure ahead of them, which they now saw was a tall step pyramid. It had a slightly rectangular base, about five hundred meters wide one the broad side facing them, approximately four hundred meters on the other two. The stones climbed bulkily towards the sky; they had been carefully carved to fit together, it appeared, and consisted of eight levels that shrunk in width and depth, though not height, on a three hundred meter climb towards the sky. The pyramid was heavily overgrown with vegetation--vines snaked over its stones, moss filled the many cracks in the structure, and ferns sprouted here and there on the stern grey stone facade. Directly ahead of them was a high archway; evidently the pyramid was hollow inside, which was remarkable, given its overall bulk and evident mass. 

"I lived here when I was a little girl," Kilu said, her gaze never wandering from the step pyramid that sat before them in the jungle. 

"You _did?_" Axel asked incredulously. 

"Yes," Kilu replied. "I was very young. I didn't remember until I looked at the temple," she said, pointing at the step pyramid. "At least, my mother called it a temple. We lived in a survival pod about a kilometer that way," she said, pointing east of the temple, as she called it. 

"What in the stars were you doing here?" Axel asked her. He raised one hand to wipe the copious sweat from his forehead. Already, his clothes were soaked with perspiration, as were Kilu's. He couldn't fathom it. The jungle planet, with its oppressive heat and humidity, was far from being comfortable or hospitable, and it was well off the hyperspace lanes out in the furthest reaches of galactic space--the proverbial middle of nowhere. It was no place to raise a child, that much he was sure of. He began to move forward again, towards that doorway in the step pyramid. Kilu followed, though she seemed to be half in a trance. 

"We were hiding." 

"From what?" 

"From the Empire, of course," she told him. "We weren't Jedi, but some in the family used to be. My mother was Force-sensitive, and she knew that I was too. The Emperor and Vader would likely have either enslaved us or killed us if we'd been found." 

Axel couldn't suppress a shudder that ran down his back, despite the oppressive heat. He didn't like the idea of either fate for Kilu, and was glad she'd avoided them. Maybe bringing a child to this inhospitable world wasn't such a bad idea after all, under the circumstances. Even so, he didn't want to stay any longer than they absolutely had to. The heat and humidity were bad enough, but it wasn't just that. All around them was evidence of a civilization that had thrived and then inexplicably died. He couldn't help imagining the spirits of those beings rising up to confront them for trespassing on their property. Now that he'd seen the place he was no longer surprised regarding all the smugglers' tales describing the planet as haunted. The place gave him the feeling that most sentient species in the galaxy described as "the creeps". 

They were less than one hundred meters from the step pyramid when Kilu stopped moving again. She was staring at the huge stone structure intensely. She inhaled deeply, quickly--almost a gasp. 

"Is there something wrong?" Axel asked her. He's been carrying his blaster in his left hand since they'd left the ship. Its grip was now slick with his sweat, but he had a strap that fastened the weapon to his wrist so he wouldn't lose it in a fight. He pointed the blaster ahead of them, his eyes searching for danger in any form. 

"The dark side is strong here," Kilu said in a strained voice. "My mother told me to stay away from the place, and I had no problem obeying." She shuddered. "Come on. Let's go find this missing Jedi data and get out of here. These aren't exactly my favourite childhood memories to relive." 

"Sure thing," Axel agreed. 

He wanted to reach out and place a reassuring hand on her shoulder, but he thought she probably wouldn't appreciate it, so he held back. He knew that Kilu had more than just the usual Jedi wariness of the dark side; she'd once told him that her great aunt had been a Jedi who'd crossed over to the dark side of the Force. Kilu, he knew, had a fear that her ancestor's susceptibility to the dark side ran in the family. 

The large doorway into the step pyramid was about four meters high and five meters wide. As they stepped inside, they were momentarily blinded by the relative darkness, but only momentarily. Their eyes did not take long to adjust, because the inside of the structure was lit--not by windows or openings in the stone, nor by electronic means, but by huge, long strips of some sort of phosphorescent material that had been applied to the walls to provide illumination, and still did, even centuries after its initial application. As their eyes adjusted to the level of light, they both gasped softly. Contrary to its external appearance, which was heavy and blocky, inside the step pyramid was hollow, the ceiling soaring to a dizzying height in a jagged fashion, an inverse of the steps on the exterior. 

The jungle, however, had intruded into the structure; vines ran everywhere, and various forms of fungi were taking over the floor. In the middle of the structure was what must once have been a building within the building, a rectangular stone structure about two stories in height. But its roof had collapsed and its crumbling walls threatened to do the same. Nevertheless, they both surmised that if someone was going to hide any data storage units in the place, it would be within that ruined structure. 

They moved apart a few meters in order to search independently and cover more ground. Something on the floor caught Axel's eye and he moved towards it to investigate. Kilu, meanwhile, took a breath and reached out with the Force. In a heartbeat, her eyes opened wide and she gasped loudly. 

"What?" Axel exclaimed, spinning around to look at her. She looked shocked: her eyes were open wide, staring wildly about her, her mouth had dropped open, and she was gulping down breaths. Axel looked around quickly, scanning for a source of danger, his blaster drawn and ready. Then he realized she hadn't drawn her lightsaber. "What _is _it?" 

"It's... not possible!" she whispered hoarsely. 

"My dear Kilu," a deep male voice suddenly said from the darkness behind one of the nearly-collapsed walls of the inner building, "surely you remember what I often told you: that once you have eliminated the impossible, then whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." 

Axel whirled around towards the sound of the voice, pointing his blaster at it. There--in the shadow of a crumbling stone wall, he discerned the silhouette of a tall humanoid. He was tempted to fire at the figure, but restrained himself, remembering he had a Jedi with him who was far more capable than he was at handling threats. And if this mysterious newcomer had any information that would help Kilu on her quest, then they wanted him alive. Or so he hoped; there was something about this stranger that was making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, despite how soaked they were with sweat. 

"I've got a bad feeling about this," Axel muttered to himself. Then Kilu's next words astonished him. 

"Master!" Kilu exclaimed. "Master, you're alive!" 

As Axel watched, Kilu's face lit up suddenly, her delight and relief readily apparent on her lovely features. She took a step towards the figure in the dark... then stopped abruptly, as if someone or something had slapped her in the face. Her expression of joy disappeared, replaced by one of confusion, then growing apprehension. "No..." she murmured. 

"A _very _bad feeling," Axel muttered, returning his gaze--and the barrel of his blaster--to the mysterious figure a few meters away. 

The man stepped out from his place of concealment beside the inner structure's crumbling wall. As he did so, the eerie bluish phosphorescent light illuminated his features, and Axel felt his gut twist into an anxious knot. He was human, tall, with short jet-black hair, dark almond-shaped eyes, and a formidable build covered by a loose midnight black tunic and equally dark pants. Those details were unremarkable. The unsettling thing was the elaborate red and black tattoos that covered every square centimetre of his exposed skin--that and the lightsaber hanging from his belt. 

"Cylus Vax..." Kilu whispered, half in reverence, half in disbelief. Her former Jedi Master. Supposedly killed several months ago, just before she'd met Axel for the first time. Now, apparently, very much alive. And very much a Sith. 

* * *


	9. Chapter 9

**Fighting with Monsters**

**Star Wars: The Bergeron Chronicles, Part 2**

_a fanfic by Sisiutil_

* * *

**Chapter 9**

Axel only hesitated a moment, then fired a half-dozen blaster shots at the Sith. His target's hand moved faster than Axel's eye could follow; before he even squeezed off his first shot, the man's lightsaber came to life and each subsequent blaster bolt was deflected with a flash of the bright red-hued blade. 

"Do not try my patience, Mister Bergeron," the Sith said, casting a menacing glance at Axel. 

The freighter pilot knew he was outmatched. He lowered his blaster until it pointed at the floor, but did not return it to its holster. Its weight in his hand was his sole source of comfort at the moment--that and the presence of Kilu only a couple of meters away from him. The Sith turned his gaze away from Axel and back to Kilu, then deactivated his lightsaber. 

"M-Master?" she asked questioningly. Even during the brief firefight, she had not torn her eyes away from the Sith standing only a few meters in front of her. "Is--is it really you?" 

"Ah, Kilu," the man said, his lips curling into a smile that could only be described as predatory. "What a delight it is to see you again. _And _to hear you call me Master. Yes, it is I." 

"I... I saw you die," Kilu stammered. 

"My dear girl," the man said, "have you remembered nothing of my teachings? Your eyes can deceive you; don't trust them." 

"But..." Kilu said, her head slowly shaking from side to side, "Master Vax... you-you've gone over... over to..." 

"The dark side?" he replied, briefly flashing a wolfish grin at her. "Yes, you can feel it, can't you? The power, Kilu--the _power!_ It's _incredible!_ But you'll find out for yourself soon enough. Oh, and please don't call me by my former name. Cylus Vax is dead. I... am Darth Mostrus, Lord of the Sith," he said with a slight bow. 

"No..." Kilu said, her voice very nearly a whimper. "Not you... not you..." 

_Oh, this is SO not good_, Axel thought as he watched the scene unfold with growing trepidation. Here he was, once again confronted by a Sith, and the only Jedi within several thousand light-years appeared to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The fact that the Sith in question was Kilu's former Jedi master and probably knew more about her than almost anyone else in the galaxy only made it, oh, a thousand times worse, give or take. And unlike the last time, Axel doubted that this Sith was going to walk out and obligingly position himself behind the _Nomad_'s sub-light engine exhaust ports. His mind was whirling, trying to think of a plan, something, _anything_... But he silently acknowledged that he was just a freighter jockey, not a tactical wizard or anything close to it. The sweat he felt covering his body was no longer there just because of the jungle planet's oppressive heat. 

"Kilu, really, don't be so childish!" Darth Mostrus chided her. "You've come so far, I really expected better of you. I've been truly impressed by how you've made it through all the trials I set in your way. Even if you did need a little help," he added, casting another glance at Axel. "Yes, a crude but effective gambit on your part, my dear," he said, still staring at the freighter pilot in a way that uncomfortably reminded Axel of the way a nexu looks at a prospective meal. "One of the oldest tricks in the book, really. Using your... feminine whiles, shall we say, to bring this... _lesser being _under your thrall." 

Kilu blinked rapidly in response to her former master's words. "W-what...?" 

"I should warn you," Mostrus went on as he placed his hands behind his back--further conveying his disdain for Axel's shooting skills--and paced slowly towards his former student. "Such crude gambits will likely no longer be as effective once you have the Sith tattoos adorning that lovely face of yours. But you'll be so powerful then, you'll have no need of them." He cast another dismissive glance at Axel. "Though I suppose he may be useful if you have an itch to scratch every now and again." 

"What? No!" Kilu said, her head shaking rapidly. She turned to look anxiously at her companion. "Axel... it isn't like that!" she said plaintively.

"Relax, Kilu," Axel said in a voice that was steadier than how he felt. He kept his eyes on their adversary as he spoke to her. "He's a Sith. Lies, deceit, spreading discord--they're this guy's bread and butter. Like those old Jedi records you were told about. That was bait to draw you here." 

"Oh, he is a clever one!" Darth Mostrus said, favouring Axel with a condescending grin. "I can see why you've adopted him as a pet. But despite his amusing, periodic flashes of insight, he is nothing more than a distraction," he went on, returning his full attention to Kilu. "And you must not allow distractions to interfere with your training. Which we will now resume." 

"T-training?" Kilu, her mind still whirling, stammered. "No... no! I'll never train with you. I won't... I won't go over to the dark side!" 

Darth Mostrus shook his head. "Kilu, Kilu, Kilu... I had hoped you would have lost some of that naïveté. You have no idea how powerful the dark side can be. But you _will_." 

"No," Kilu said, "I won't!" 

Axel, seeing that the Sith's attention was now wholly focused on his former pupil, began to quietly back away. He wasn't Force-sensitive, he couldn't see the future, but it didn't take a Jedi or a genius to see that a lightsaber duel was imminent. He wasn't sure if Kilu was a match in such a fight for her former master, even if she managed to shake off her current state of confusion. But if she could just distract the Sith long enough, Axel thought, then maybe he could sneak in a shot. Failing that, if worse came to worst, there was that curiosity in the floor that he'd noticed. He slowly, surreptitiously moved towards it. 

"Yes you _will_," Mostrus told her, biting off each word, his dark eyes alight with zealous ferocity. "You _will _be my apprentice once again, Kilu Branon, and together we will return the Empire to its rightful ascendancy in the galaxy. The Force is strong in you--the _dark _side of the Force. Just as it was strong in your great-aunt. _And_ in your mother..." 

"NO!" Kilu said. "Th-that's a lie..." 

Tears were shimmering in her eyes. Her entire body was rigid. Her hands were clenched into fists. Sweat covered her pale skin, matted her auburn hair, soaked her clothing. Even from several meters away, Axel could see her trembling. He had no idea what the bond between a Master Jedi and his apprentice was like, but he imagined it was a very close one, and seeing this perverted form of her former Master was obviously taking a toll on her. _Come on, babe, pull yourself together_, Axel thought as he continued to slowly, cautiously move towards the crumbling stone walls of the ancient inner building. 

"A dark Jedi master died here long ago," Mostrus informed Kilu. "Quite violently. Now, ask yourself: knowing this, why would your mother bring you here as a child?" Darth Mostrus posited rhetorically. "To this place that is so redolent of the dark side? Unless it was to imbue her daughter with its essence..." 

"_No_," Kilu said through clenched teeth. "You're _lying_. Shut _up_." Tears were running down her cheeks now. 

"Think it through, Kilu," Mostrus said softly. "It's the only plausible explanation." He raised his voice. "Going somewhere, Mister Bergeron?" 

Axel froze in his tracks. He should have known, he reflected, that he'd never be able to sneak by a Sith Lord. He swallowed hard. "Looks like you two have some issues to work through," he said as nonchalantly as he could manage. "Thought I'd give you some space." 

"Or sneak around and shoot me in the back?" Darth Mostrus said, a mockingly amused smile on his tattooed lips. 

"Leave him out of this," Kilu told her former master in a tremulous but increasingly determined voice. "This is between us. It doesn't concern him." 

"Oh, well, then," Mostrus said with mock innocence, "if Mister Bergeron is no longer our concern, then he's no longer required, is he?" 

The Sith reached out with his left hand towards Axel, or, more correctly, towards the decrepit stone walls of the ancient inner building that loomed behind him. There was a rumble, and then the walls began to fall over, falling towards Axel, threatening to crush him flat. Axel, no novice to reading people, had understood Mostrus' intent and was already in motion. He couldn't get out from the heavy stone's path in time, so he launched himself towards that anomaly in the floor he'd noticed earlier, his one chance, his one hope...

"AXEL!" Kilu shouted, her eyes wide with horror as she saw the walls crumbling and falling towards him with a roar like that of some ferocious beast. A thick cloud of dust arose as the crumbling, eons-old mortar was released into the air along with water vapor and plant material. With an ear-splitting crash, the thick stone wall smashed into the ground. Then an oppressive silence hung in the air of the ancient temple. Kilu ran towards the cloud of dust and steam, waving her arms to clear it away, looking for a sign, any sign of Axel, some indication that he had survived. The debris cloud began to settle, and as she scanned the rubble, Kilu saw nothing, no sign of him at all. "Axel... NO!" she yelled. 

"Yes, you feel the _anger_, don't you?" Darth Mostrus said from behind her. As if in confirmation, Kilu whirled around and glared at him. "You feel the _fear_ and the _fury_. You feel their _power_!" he said, clenching one fist in emphasis. "Give in to them, Kilu. Use them to _strike_ at me!" 

"You _bastard...!_" Kilu snarled at him. 

Kilu drew her lightsaber and activated it. The bright green blade leapt from the hilt with a hiss and hummed threateningly in the quiet of the temple. Her teeth were clenched, her lips peeled back in an enraged grimace. Her chest rose and fell as she panted her breaths. Her dark brown eyes looked at her former Master with a murderous glare. 

"Yesssss..." Darth Mostrus hissed at her, smiling broadly as he used the Force to sense and savour the furious rage building within her. 

Somehow, through the sorrow and the fear and the anger swirling through her mind; somehow, through the emotional turmoil that threatened to pull her to the dark side from the knife's edge where she now stood; somehow, for some reason she could not begin to fathom, she heard Axel's voice. Not speaking to her through the Force, but through memory. A memory of only a few days earlier, when their lives had yet again been on the line. A memory of his hand touching her shoulder. A memory of the adoring, confident look in his eyes. A memory of the certainty in his voice when he'd spoken. And especially a memory of the words themselves. 

_You're a Jedi. I believe in you. _

And as Kilu heard the words again, those simple words that had meant more to her than she'd been able to tell him, her years of training came back to her in a rush. She closed her eyes and took one long, deep breath. She felt her sorrow, and her fear, and her anger... and she let them fall away. Then she opened her eyes and regarded the Sith Lord with an impassive expression and a look in her eye that was as cold as ice, and every bit as hard. 

"Kilu," Darth Mostrus said with a sigh. "I just want you to know, I'm not angry. I'm just... disappointed." 

He drew his lightsaber and activated it. The bright red blade threw its light upon the dark, dank inner walls of the ancient temple, turning them the color of blood. 

* * *


	10. Chapter 10

**Fighting with Monsters**

**Star Wars: The Bergeron Chronicles, Part 2**

_a fanfic by Sisiutil_

* * *

**Chapter 10**

The bright green blade of Kilu Branon's lightsaber crackled as it made contact with the Darth Mostrus' red-tinted weapon. The Jedi apprentice and her former Master disengaged their blades, then attacked one another again. Kilu's lightsaber swept towards the Sith from his right; Mostrus parried the blow and pushed back, forcing Kilu to retreat a couple of steps. She lunged the tip of the blade towards his left side--a feint--then quickly withdrew, swinging the blade over his to swipe downwards towards his left shoulder. The Sith barely managed to deflect the blow, but he did, and took a step backwards from his opponent himself.

"You've been practicing, I see," he commented. "Excellent." 

Kilu said nothing. She knew she had to focus completely on the fight and not get distracted by her former Master's banter. The heat and humidity of the jungle world was already taking a toll upon her, even though they were out of the sun inside the remains of an ancient stone temple. Every breath felt like she was trying to inhale swamp water. Sweat ran down her face, matted her auburn hair, and stung her eyes. Darth Mostrus, as far as she could see, had not yet broken a sweat, while the young Jedi's clothing--a white sleeveless singlet top and khaki pants--were already soaked with perspiration, and that was just from the mild exertion of walking to the temple from the _Nomad_, Axel Bergeron's space freighter. 

Axel. Kilu had to push her concern for him from her mind. Darth Mostrus had used the Force to collapse a wall on top of the freighter pilot; for all Kilu knew, her former lover was dead beneath it. But she couldn't let that distract her now. Distractions meant death--for both of them. Because if Axel had somehow survived, if he was clinging to life beneath that collapsed pile of stone, Kilu was his only chance for rescue. 

Darth Mostrus now went on the attack. His red-tinted lightsaber hummed menacingly through the air, striking first at Kilu's left side, then her right, right again, then the left, Kilu quickly parrying each blow. He had been her Jedi Master before he'd turned to the dark side of the Force. He'd trained her in lightsaber combat. Her moves were his own. But that fact reflected back on him; Kilu knew Cylus Vax's moves as well. Or so she thought. 

The fight was even for the first few moments, Kilu and Mostrus alternating their attempts at attack and defense. Then Mostrus took a step and misplaced it, slipping on the moss-covered stone floor. He instinctively threw out his right arm, which held his lightsaber, for balance. It was exactly the sort of opening Kilu had been hoping for. She stepped forward, her blade swinging towards the Sith's undefended left. 

She realized, nearly too late, that she'd fallen for a ruse. Mostrus recovered his balance as soon as she'd committed herself. His red blade easily warded off her attack, knocking her blade down, then swung back towards Kilu's undefended torso. 

Had this fight taken place only a few months earlier, Kilu would surely have died at that point. But she had faced another Sith in a lightsaber duel upon B'Tel Four, and she'd been soundly defeated. Only the unexpected but very welcome heroics of Axel Bergeron had saved her. When she'd returned to the Jedi Praxeum on Yavin 4, she'd thrown herself wholeheartedly into improving her prowess with the Force, and especially with a lightsaber. Without pause or thought, she used the Force now to send her body spinning backwards, away to her right, and landed in a crouching position, her left leg bent beneath her, her right stretched out to the side, her left hand touching the mossy ground for balance. She held her lightsaber in front of her and eyed her adversary warily. 

"Impressive!" Darth Mostrus said. "By all rights you should be dead now." 

"I've learned a few tricks since you betrayed the Jedi Order, Vax," she said as she slowly and warily arose from her crouching position. Calling him by his old name was a feeble attempt to distract him, but if it worked...

"As have I, my apprentice," the Sith said. "As have I."

With that, he suddenly launched himself high into the air. Kilu remained where she was and braced herself. His attack was furious and seemed to come from three directions at once, above her and on each side, so fast were his strokes with the lightsaber as he descended towards her. It took all her skill and the guidance of the Force to ward off the blows. When he landed a mere meter from her, Kilu Force-jumped away from him in retreat, knowing he would immediately follow but having no choice. She landed on her feet and immediately swung her lightsaber over her head and behind her back to ward off his immediate attack. She then Force-jumped into a backwards somersault, using the pressure of the blades as leverage, and bringing herself to face him once again. 

The Sith immediately took the initiative, driving Kilu backwards with a series of quick, aggressive swings and thrusts. The young Jedi could feel the match slowly but surely slipping away from her. She kept watching for Darth Mostrus to make a mistake, to leave her an opening, but his execution was flawless. To make matters worse, the heat and humidity were sapping her strength. With every passing second, her limbs felt heavier... slower. She thought she had set the emotion aside, but now she could feel the fear creeping back inside her, the certainty that defeat and death were imminent. 

"Yes, Kilu, you feel it, don't you?" Darth Mostrus taunted her as he continued to attack her, seemingly impervious to the heat himself. "The fear. Fear and its ever-present companion, anger." He swung his lightsaber at her right side. She parried, but could feel him holding back on the blow. He was toying with her now. "Give in to them, Kilu! Use the dark side. It's the only way you'll defeat me." 

"No!" Kilu shouted. 

She drew upon her last reserves of strength and upon the Force and launched herself forward, swinging the glowing green blade at him, more desperation in her blows than coordination, but dangerous nonetheless. She even managed to push him back a step or two. But the Sith parried each swing and thrust until Kilu's arms felt like they were made of lead and as though her feet were anchored to the floor. She made one more feeble attempt at a slashing blow only to see Mostrus easily swat it aside. Her arms dropped though she silently screamed at them to rise, to defend her. The air itself seemed like her enemy now; her lungs were gulping it down, pumping like bellows, but they couldn't seem to get enough. She felt light-headed, as if she might faint. Salty sweat stung her eyes; she blinked repeatedly, trying to clear her vision. 

Darth Mostrus grunted with contempt. He positioned the blade of his lightsaber beneath hers. He swept her blade up, lifting her arms along with it, in a sweeping circular motion, up, overhead, around and down, then back up again, until the hilt of Kilu's lightsaber slipped from her sweat-soaked hands and rose into the air. The bright green energy blade disappeared, along with Kilu's hopes, as it escaped from her grip. Mostrus reached up and snatched the inactive lightsaber out of the air. He tucked it into his black belt. Then he gestured towards Kilu with the open palm of his left hand. 

The young Jedi flew backwards from the Force-push, flying for several meters until she slammed into part of the wall of the inner temple building. The impact knocked the breath from her lungs and she collapsed to the moist, moss-laden stone floor. Exhausted, out of breath, in pain, and utterly defeated, Kilu nevertheless clumsily attempted to push herself up. She could hear the Sith's soft footfalls upon the mossy ground as he approached her, could hear the hum of his lightsaber drawing near, bringing death with it. She managed to push herself up to a sitting position, her back against the wall. Then the hum of the lightsaber and its angry red glow came in close, right in front of her. She gasped and drew back, pressing herself against the cold stone wall, her eyes riveted on the bright tip of the energy blade which hovered a mere hand's breadth from her face. 

"Stand up," Darth Mostrus commanded. 

Shakily, wearily, Kilu forced her body to obey the command. Every second she clung to life offered some hope, however meagre, that she would find a way to live, to survive, to defeat her enemy and to save Axel. Even as she thought this, however, she knew that she was fooling herself. Nonetheless, she rose. She used the stone wall to support herself, feeling its rough edges scraping her back through the thin sleeveless top she wore. She could feel tears joining the sweat that ran down her face.

"Foolish girl," Mostrus sneered. "You could have beaten me. All you had to do was draw upon the dark side of the Force, but no--you cling to your pathetic Jedi principles." He sighed and shook his head. "The Force is strong in you. For that reason alone, I give you this one last chance. Give in. Accept the dark side's power into yourself. Surrender... or die." 

For a moment, she was tempted. Sorely tempted. It was her one and only chance, and Axel's as well. But Axel would be horrified to see her give in to the dark side of the Force. She couldn't face that, couldn't face him afterwards. Though it meant a death sentence for them both, she shook her head. 

"Never," she breathed. 

Mostrus snorted with contempt. "Pathetic. I've taken everything from you. Your lightsaber, your lover, and very shortly, your life. You have nothing, you _are _nothing... except what I offer you. And still you spurn me." He shrugged. "Disappointing. Farewell, Kilu." 

The Sith was about to strike, to end the life of his former apprentice, but he paused. He held back because even now, when death was certain, she had managed to surprise him. He glanced at her face and was taken aback to see her smiling. A confident smile, the smile of a victor. For all their differences, the Sith and the Jedi both valued knowledge--they simply put it towards different ends. And Darth Mostrus suddenly desired--more than he desired his defiant former apprentice's death--to know the reason for that smile. 

"You're wrong," Kilu told him. "I _have_ something else. Something you cannot take away. I have..." she drew a breath, "...the _Force_." 

He sensed it before he saw it. He felt the Force suddenly flowing into her, through her, with an intensity such as even he himself had never experienced. She had placed herself entirely in its keeping, had become its vessel, its agent in the physical realm. And in that instant, his own connection to the dark side of the Force screamed inside his mind, warning him of the danger he was now in. 

Kilu raised her hands, which had felt so heavy only a moment before but now felt energized, refreshed. Darth Mostrus stepped back from her and turned just in time to see a half dozen heavy blocks of stone flying towards him from different directions with blinding speed. His lightsaber would not be able to deflect them all, no matter how quickly he swung it. Instead, he Force-jumped over the incoming projectiles. Unseen by him, Kilu also Force-jumped, mirroring his own acrobatic path through the air. The heavy stones fell with a crash to the ground beneath them. 

The Sith landed and for the first time in the battle with his former apprentice, felt a shiver of fear when he realized he didn't know where she was. He was about to reach out with the Force to find her when he felt an insolent tap on his shoulder. He spun around, swinging his lightsaber in an arc, turning to face... nothing. Then suddenly Kilu rose from a crouch to stand right in front of him. Her right hand reached across both their bodies to grip his right wrist, holding his lightsaber at bay. Moving like a dancer, she pivoted around until her back was towards him. Her head snapped back and smashed against his nose, breaking it and stunning him. She reached back with her left hand, grasped her lightsaber from his belt, positioned the emitter against his solar plexus and pressed the activation switch. The green blade of energy erupted from the hilt, piercing his abdomen and cutting directly through his spine. 

The Sith's eyes opened wide, as did his mouth. His lightsaber fell from his hand as he lost all motor control over his limbs. He tried to draw a breath but could not. Kilu turned off her lightsaber and the blade withdrew from his body. A heartbeat later, he collapsed to the ground. 

Kilu stood above him and slowly reclaimed control of her body from the Force. As she did so, she felt the heavy weariness return to her limbs. Despite her exhaustion, she sighed with relief. She had won. She was alive. At her feet, she heard her former Master making an odd noise--a soft, staccato cackling sound. She first assumed that it was a death rattle, but then realized it was something else entirely. He was laughing. 

As she watched, he lifted his gaze to meet hers. His dark eyes were clouded with pain, but had a surprising look of triumph in them. 

"Do you... know," Darth Mostrus said, his voice little more than a harsh croak, "the ultimate... destiny... of a Sith apprentice?" His lips briefly twitched into a smile. "She must... _kill_ her Master." Again he made the unsettling, cackling laugh; blood sputtered from between his lips. "Congratulations..." he hissed at her. 

Kilu's eyes widened. His words stung; they felt like a slap in the face. She was too tired to resist it now, and her anger got the better of her. She snapped her lightsaber back to life. With an enraged shout, she swung the blade at his neck. His head spun away from his body, coming to rest a meter away on the cold stone floor of the temple. 

She stood there, her entire body trembling with fatigue, her chest heaving as she laboured to breathe the hot, moist air. The desire to lay down and sleep for several days suddenly overwhelmed her. She shook her head in an attempt to clear it. She was forgetting something... something important. She glanced around the inside of the ancient temple, her eyes coming to rest upon a pile of debris a few meters away. Then it came back to her, shocking her back to full awareness as though she'd been splashed with a bucket of icy-cold water. 

"AXEL!" she shouted as she ran towards the heavy stones that had fallen upon her ex-lover only moments ago. And as she ran towards the last place where she'd seen him alive, cold terror gripped her heart. Because she had reached out with the Force towards that very spot, and she couldn't sense him. 

* * *


	11. Chapter 11

**Fighting with Monsters**

**Star Wars: The Bergeron Chronicles, Part 2**

_a fanfic by Sisiutil_

* * *

**Chapter 11**

"Axel... AXEL!" Kilu yelled, not wanting to believe what the Force, her senses, and her mind were all telling her: that Axel Bergeron was dead beneath the pile of heavy stones that Darth Mostrus had pulled down upon him.

She refused to believe it. She was exhausted from the hot, humid air of the jungle, and from her desperate fight with her former Jedi Master. If not for the abject fear Kilu felt that Axel was dead, she would have fallen into an exhausted sleep right where she stood. She couldn't rely on her senses or her judgement; she wondered if she could even rely on her connection to the Force in her current state. Nevertheless, she could feel fresh adrenaline pumping through her veins, and her concern for her former lover drove her on.

"Axel please, please..." she pleaded as fresh, hot tears ran down her face. She stared at the pile of heavy stones, not knowing where to begin. "Stop it... STOP IT!!" she yelled at herself, furious at her emotional weakness. She had to regain control if she was to have any hope at all of finding him, of rescuing him. She took a deep breath and reached out with one hand, then called upon the Force.

The topmost stone in the pile wobbled, then rose into the air and flew aside. Panting, her eyes opened wide, Kilu smiled briefly at her initial, modest success. She gestured towards another heavy stone. It took her a heartbeat longer, but then it, too, was tossed away from the pile. Grimacing, she reached out towards another stone. It did not budge. A guttural yell escaped her lips, and the stone rolled away from the pile. Again, Kilu reached out towards one of the stones, but this time, as she gulped down her breaths and as more tears spilled from her eyes, the stone refused to move.

Kilu grimaced. Where was her connection to the Force that had been so strong only a moment before, when she was fighting? Why couldn't she draw upon it now as she had then? She silently berated herself; she had used the Force that to save herself, but now she could not do so in order to save another? A Jedi could not be so selfish. She ground her teeth and reached out to the rock again. It rose unsteadily, then moved a meter, dropped, bounced, and rolled off of the pile.

The young Jedi collapsed to her knees. It was exhausting work, and it was taking too long. Axel could be under that pile, dying, and she would never reach him in time. She drew a heavy breath and then exhaled it as a cry of anguish, while hot tears coursed down her cheeks.

It began as a whisper in the back of her mind. The swirling turmoil of her emotions, her fear of losing him, her anger at herself for failing him, her sorrow at her loss, brought the notion forth into her conscious thoughts. Her mourning stopped and her eyes widened. She had resisted it before, even in the face of her own death. But now, confronted with the death of another--of someone whom, yes, she realized now, despite all those months denying it, she loved--her resistance failed her. For his sake, she gave in. She drew upon her anger, her fear, her sorrow; she drew upon their power.

She drew upon the dark side of the Force.

Her face was alight with the intensity of the powerful emotions she felt. She reached out towards the pile of debris. It trembled, then it shook. Then, in an instant, it erupted, stones flying through the air away from where they'd lain, dust and water vapour rising once again into the eerie bluish-green light of the ancient temple. Kilu pushed herself up upon her feet, waved her arms in front of her to clear away the debris cloud, coughing, moving towards the spot where Alex' body must lay, and then she was there, she looked down... and she saw it.

A hole. A hole in the floor, about a meter in diameter. She stood, gaping at it, and then she almost laughed. Axel, clever, resourceful Axel... she should have known. If anyone could have found away to escape certain death at the hands of a Sith Lord, it would be him. But then she felt the knot in her stomach tighten again: how deep was the hole? How far had he fallen? She reached out with the Force. She sensed nothing, probed further down... There! Just over four meters down... she could sense him... he was alive! But was he hurt?

"Axel?" she called out tentatively, hopefully. "Axel! Axel, please..." She waited, listening, for several seconds that seemed liked hours. Finally, her patience was rewarded with the sound of a low, pained groan. "Axel!" she shouted excitedly. "Axel, it's me, Kilu..."

"Uhhhhh..." he moaned from the pitch black depths of the hole into which he'd thrown himself. "Kilu? Unghh... are you okay?"

Oh, she wanted to kiss him for that. There he was, laying in the darkness at the bottom of a deep hole, possibly injured, and his first thought upon recovering consciousness was for her welfare.

"I'm fine," she said, her voice shaking with relieved laughter. "I'm fine._ You're_ the one I'm worried about. Are you hurt?"

"That's a safe bet," his strained voice responded. "Hang on..." She waited for a few seconds. Then he spoke, his voice still tinged with pain. "Okay... right ankle: broken, right wrist: sprained, several cuts and lacerations... including one head wound that's bleeding like mad and hurts like a son of a..."

"Do you have a concussion?" she interrupted him.

"Not sure..."

She couldn't resist; she was feeling giddy about finding him alive, and relatively healthy. "How many fingers am I holding up?" she asked, grinning.

"_Very_ funny," his indignant response echoed from the bottom of the dark hole. "The comedy profession suffered a serious blow when you became a Jedi... Ungh... Hang on..."

She heard a click, and then a light appeared at the bottom of the shaft, though she still couldn't see him. Evidently he'd turned on his flashlight.

"I can't see you," she said. "Looks like you rolled away from where you landed."

"Yeah. Okay, I can see fine, no double vision... so no concussion. Hey, wait a minute..." He was silent for a moment. "Mon Mothma's garters!" he said in a surprised whisper.

"What? What is it?" she asked, then waited for his response.

"You better get down here."

Kilu inhaled sharply, but reached out with the Force--she sensed no danger. What had he seen, then? There was only one way to find out--well, two ways, but apparently he didn't want to just _tell_ her. Then again, she conceded, he was badly hurt, and she had to go down there to help him anyway. She instinctively called upon the Force, but then caught herself. She had been about to summon up her fear and anger again, and call upon the dark side. She shuddered.

"No. Just that one time. Just that once. Never again..." she told herself. The shaking in her hands wasn't just from fatigue.

She would just have to do things the hard way. She looked around; she remembered that Axel had a rope fastened to his belt, but it might be awkward, or even impossible, for him to try to throw it up to her. But there were plenty of vines around. She looked for one that was coiled upon the ground that appeared to be the right length and pulled on it to test its strength. It held. She used her lightsaber to cut it loose, then dragged it over to the hole. She tied one end around a large, heavy stone that had once been part of a wall, then threw the rest of the vine down. She wrapped the long green tendril around her torso and carefully rappelled down the shaft.

She found him laying a couple of meters away from the point directly below the hole, where some debris from the wall collapse lay. The ground sloped away from there towards him, so that helped explain how he'd come to be where he was--and how he'd avoided getting hurt even worse by the debris that fell into the hole behind him. His flashlight showed her what she'd expected: he had several cuts on his head, shoulders and arms, his clothing was badly torn and stained with dirt and blood, and the pain of his injuries was evident in the strain on his face. But he was alive, and she'd never been happier to see someone in her life.

Without even thinking about it, she ran over to him, fell to her knees, and wrapped her arms around him. He inhaled sharply in pain, but then relaxed into the embrace. He wrapped his left arm around her and held her close. She pulled her head back, placed both of her hands upon his face as she gazed into his eyes, then pressed her lips against his. The kiss was deep and passionate and temporarily made him forget all about the pain he was suffering. He pressed his lips against hers and placed his uninjured left hand behind her head to caress her hair.

"I thought I'd lost you," she said once she'd broken the kiss, her voice shaking, her eyes shimmering with fresh tears.

"Same here," he said, his own voice heavy with emotion. "Mostrus?"

She shook her head. "Dead," she told him.

He stared at her for a moment, trying to gauge her feelings, then a proud grin appeared on his face. "That's my girl," he whispered.

A short, bittersweet laugh escaped her lips, then she threw her arms around him again and pressed her body against his. She began to sob as all the anguish of what she had gone through--finding her supposedly-dead Master, discovering he'd gone over to the dark side, having to fight and kill him, nearly losing Axel--overwhelmed her. Through it all, Axel held her with the one arm that didn't hurt like crazy, stroked her hair and her back and murmured soft, soothing words into her ear.

Some time later, she slowly, reluctantly pulled out of the embrace. "Well, I guess we should get you out of here," she said as she wiped tears from her eyes.

"Hang on," he said. "There's something you should see."

He raised his flashlight and pointed it to his right. There, in the small cavern where they found themselves, was a titanium case, about one meter long and half that high and wide, and bearing the unmistakeable symbol of the pre-Empire Jedi Order. Slowly, reverently, she rose and walked towards the case. She opened it. Inside, she could see, were dozens of holobooks. Kilu gasped softly. For several moments, she simply stared at all the holobooks, marvelling at how much lost Jedi knowledge they must contain. She then noticed an identification mark inside the case and another gasp escaped her lips.

"Shaak Ti...!" she whispered.

"What?" Axel queried.

"Not what, _who_," she responded. "Shaak Ti was one of the few Jedi Masters who survived the Great Purge. She was Togrutan; she had quite a reputation for cunning," she said, smiling as she cast a glance over her shoulder at Axel. "'As beautiful as a flower, but as deadly as a viper,' was how one other Jedi Master described her. But... we have no knowledge of her ever coming to this planet. The last we heard of her, she was on Felucia. Which is thousands of light-years from here!"

"Well, you said she was cunning," Axel remarked. "Sounds like she's a personal heroine of yours?" Again, Kilu turned towards him and smiled, then nodded. "Then I'd say this trip was well worth the trouble. Now," he said in a strained voice as he struggled to push himself up until he was standing on his uninjured foot, "what do you want to get out of here and back to the ship first: that case, or me?"

"You, of course, you big dunce," she said with a smile.

She rose to her feet and walked back towards him. She helped him limp up to where the vine hung down from above. She wrapped and tied it around him, then got ready to shimmy back up to the top, where she would pull him up after her.

"You sure you're up for this?" he asked her.

"Why do you keep asking me that?" she said. "You said it yourself: I'm a Jedi. You believe in me."

"_I _said that?" he replied. "It must have been under duress."

She gave him a poke in the ribs, which made him wince. "Hey," she said, her expression suddenly serious. She reached out to caress his face with one hand. "I love you," she said.

Axel inhaled deeply as he gazed into her eyes. He nodded. "I know," he said as a grin appeared on his lips.

Kilu frowned and blinked a couple of times, then her eyebrows rose in warning even as she smiled. "Don't get cocky, flyboy," she said, poking him in the chest with her index finger.

His grin broadened into a smile. "I love you too," he told her. "Now get me outta here, will ya?"

* * *


	12. Chapter 12

**Fighting with Monsters**

**Star Wars: The Bergeron Chronicles, Part 2**

_a fanfic by Sisiutil_

* * *

**Epilogue**

It felt so real.

She could feel everything as though she were right back there on Cetachuya, in the ancient temple of that lost civilization. She could once again feel the sweat covering her body, running down her face, stinging her eyes; she was inhaling the hot, moist air that made every breath a labour; she could smell the stench of the rotting vegetation. And most of all, the light. The fierce red glare of her former Master's lightsaber, humming angrily mere centimetres from her face. Death was there, invisible but palpable, ready to take her, swallow her whole. She was defeated, all hope gone. She made one last desperate attempt to call upon the Force... and it failed to respond to her plea. It had abandoned her completely.

Then came Darth Mostrus' final offer. And in the face of certain death, with her lover slowly dying, buried alive only a few meters below her feet... she accepted. Yes, she said, yes, I will join you, I surrender completely to you, and to the dark side of the Force. Then his smile, his smile of triumph, and the sensation of the dark side taking hold of her, invading her body her through every orifice like a multi-tentacled beast until she was gone, subsumed, and she screamed and screamed as the marks appeared in black and red upon her face, upon her body, scarring her, until there was nothing left of her, nothing at all...

Kilu awoke suddenly from the nightmare and sat up. Her body was bathed in sweat, her lungs were gulping down air as though she hadn't drawn a breath for hours. Her long auburn hair hung loosely around her face. She ran one of her hands through it. Slowly she realized she was not on Cetachuya, but aboard Axel's ship, the _Nomad_, in his quarters--in his bed. It started to come back to her. They were safe now, traveling through hyperspace towards the Jedi Praxeum on Yavin 4, a case full of once-lost Jedi lore in one of the cargo holds.

Gradually, her eyes adjusted to the darkness of the room. She sensed another person beside her: the weight upon the mattress, the warmth of his body heat, the familiar, welcome presence in the Force. She glanced at Axel's sleeping form, then closed her eyes and sighed in relief. When she opened her eyes again, they were filled with tears. She brought her fingertips to her lips, kissed them, then pressed them to his forehead. He stirred just a little, moaned softly, and a smile briefly appeared upon his lips. She so desperately wanted to kiss those lips, as she'd done so passionately only a few hours before, but she didn't want to wake him. He needed his rest.

Slowly, taking extra care so as not to wake her lover, Kilu rose from the bed. She pulled a light robe over her body, then lowered herself to a cross-legged sitting position on the floor. The dream had felt so real--so disturbing. She could still feel the emotional turmoil it had left behind. She took a deep breath and began to meditate, to make her mind still and center herself in the Force.

It didn't work.

She couldn't focus. The equilibrium she sought, that she had found so many times before, was suddenly elusive, like a distant star system she could see only indirectly in her peripheral vision, that disappeared when she tried to perceive it straight on. She tried harder, struggled to focus her mind, but could not, and her failure fed her frustration and made the peace she sought even harder to achieve. And in the back of her mind she felt a presence, swirling like a vortex, all her anger, all her fears, calling to her, begging, insisting to once again experience the power they had on that hot, humid, hellish world...

"Can't sleep?"

Axel's low, deep voice and his hand, so gentle upon her shoulder, startled her; she gasped. "Oh, you scared me!" she said.

"Sorry," he murmured, his lips against her ear, his warm breath caressing her cheek.

He wrapped his arms around her torso. She pressed her back against his chest. His lips were warm against the side of her neck. She placed her hands over his and felt the tensor bandage over his right wrist, reminding her of the ordeal they'd been through, but the memory slipped away as she leaned back into his embrace, felt his warm, strong body enveloping her own. There, in his arms, she looked for some semblance of the peace she'd been seeking. But her spirit remained restless and anxious.

She pushed herself up upon her knees and turned to face him. She wrapped her arms around his neck, then pressed herself against him, holding him tight, silently asking him to do the same for her, sighing when he complied. She leaned back from the embrace, then brought her face closer to his. She sought out his lips with her own, found them, and held him there, both of them captive to the kiss, each of them lost in the another. She broke the kiss and leaned back, her arms still wrapped around him.

"Axel...!" she whispered, though her tone was pleading, urgent.

"What?" he asked her gently, the message implicit in his voice that he could refuse her nothing.

_Save me_, she thought. _Protect me. I'm so scared. I've never been so scared. _

But she said none of those things. As he watched her closely, she smiled as though embarrassed by her behaviour, shook her head, and laughed softly, abashedly. "Hold me," she said, pressing herself against him again, into his embrace. "Just hold me..."

If he noticed the subtle trembling of her body, he didn't mention it.

* * *

End of Part 2...


End file.
